


If You Love It, Bring It Back From The Dead

by whalehuntingboyfriends



Series: The Bright Side Of The Dark Side [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, OT6, sort of freewood centric in terms of the pairing, spooky scary au, temporary character death as per the prompt, this is pre-ot6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:37:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 48,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2754740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalehuntingboyfriends/pseuds/whalehuntingboyfriends
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not like Ryan made it his life’s mission to end up collecting strays. That just sort of happened. Now he’s got five assorted creatures living in his house when all he really wanted was to do some Very Important Scientific Research. This wasn’t the plan - and the plan certainly wasn’t to fall in love with Gavin.</p><p><b>Prompt:</b> Spooky Scary AU where Gavin has died recently and scientist!Ryan is working towards bringing him back secretly (since Geoff who knows the most about resurrection wouldn't allow it) so he brings him back but there's some differences in his personality and he's struggling with having another dead person’s body on him along with missing memories and coping with not being human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ryan

**Author's Note:**

> I know nothing about the spooky scary AU so I made a lot up aha. I also know nothing about science.
> 
> **TW: some level of body horror. Think Frankenstein's monster. Temporary character death as per the prompt.**

**i. ryan**

Gavin dies on a Monday.

Three days later Ryan is robbing a grave.

It is not something he has ever done before, even in the name of science, and he’s doing a pretty fucking terrible job of it. It turns out that digging is a lot harder than movies make it look. The ground is hard and rocky and frozen and he’s making a complete mess of some poor bastard’s final resting place.

It doesn’t really matter, anyway. He is, after all, about to steal their corpse and cut it to pieces.

It’s stupidly cold out; his nose is numb and the winds are whipping at his heavy coat, at the scarf around his neck. His hands are shaking around the shovel and he refuses to believe it is from anything other than the weather. And the more frustrated he gets at his slow progress, the more he hacks frantically at the ground, practically stabbing it with the shovel’s blade, movements growing more and more erratic, breathing heavier and heavier-

A dull thud as he hits wood below the dirt.

He freezes. Then slowly begins to dig again, scraping soil from the top of the coffin. Flinging it back over his shoulder carelessly.

He’s falling apart, he knows. The careful scientific composure with which he set out to do this is wasting away by the second. _Keep calm. Stay objective. Keep calm._ The same way he’s performed experiment upon experiment before, a clinical impartiality he maintains when he’s collecting resources, or writing up lab notes.

_But Gavin._

Gavin, at the back of his mind. _This isn’t for science. This is for Gavin._

—

Earlier.

For an incorporeal supernatural being Geoff sure manages to indulge in a lot of material excesses. Like Ryan’s strongest liquor. There’s something very impressive about watching him knock back shot after shot before opting to, at last, drink straight from the bottle.

Ryan watches him from where he’s leaning against the fridge. He can feel it humming warm and electric against his back as though it is alive. 

“Can you even get drunk?” he asks after a while. His voice comes out low and gravelly like he’s sick. Or like he’s been crying.

He hasn’t been crying.

“No,” Geoff replies, setting down the now empty bottle. He’s flickering a bit, the way he does when he gets emotional. Like little waves of fire are dancing over his skin almost too fast for the eye to make out. It makes him shimmer like a mirage. Sometimes Ryan wonders if all of this is just a dream.

“Perks of a demon liver,” he continues, rubbing his stomach, and Ryan’s lips quirk up in something that’s not quite a smile.

“So when are you bringing him back?” he asks, and Geoff freezes.

“… _what_.”

“Gavin. How are we doing this? Do you need me to fetch you something? Resources or materials of some sort? Will there be a ritual? Or is it just like…” he clicks his fingers. “Poof! Alive again.”

“Ryan…” Geoff’s voice trails off into something soft and gentle. The way Jack sounded a few hours ago when Ryan sat them all down in the living room to tell them what had happened.

_You carried him all the way back to the house by yourself?_

_Well, yes_. 

_You didn’t… Ryan, you didn’t have to… you should have told one of us, Jesus. We would have… you shouldn’t have been the one to…_

_Why not?_

_Because_ , Jack had insisted. Just _because_. And looked at him, then, like he was something very fragile, which Ryan couldn’t quite understand because of course he was the one who had to do it. 

Geoff’s giving him that same look now, and he steps forward and Ryan stiffens. For a moment he thinks Geoff’s going to touch him. He’s closer than Ryan’s ever been to him before, and at this distance he can _smell_ him, sharp and sparking and smokey. Ozone and incense. 

“Ryan…” Geoff’s voice is quiet and slow like he’s talking to a child. It’s not something Ryan’s used to. “I can’t bring him back.”

“Of course you can,” Ryan replies. Something confused in it. “You’re a fucking _demon_ aren’t you? Straight out of the sixth circle of hell, and let’s be real, there’s no way Gavin went to heaven. You’ve got to know something about…” he pauses, searching for the word.

“Resurrection,” he settles on.

Something flickers in Geoff’s gaze - literally, he wears his emotions in the blue flames that dance in his eyes and curl around his horns and fists. And Ryan knows there is a reason he walked into the kitchen today to find the demon drinking himself into oblivion, or trying to. He’s observed the two of them up talking late into the night, Gavin pestering Geoff with questions. Not the calculated, scientific questions Ryan asks, either. Things like “So can you really go to hell for munking off?” and “So holy water is just water that’s been blessed, right, and piss is water too so technically if you like blessed my wang I could produce holy piss right?” (To which the answer was an emphatic “ _No_.”) 

But Ryan’s seen it, both of them sitting up on the roof or sprawled on the couch together. Gavin is - _was_ \- never scared to get close to Geoff, to touch him, even if he’d been accidentally scorched a couple of times, and Ryan could tell Geoff appreciated it. Saw his fondness for the younger man in the relaxed slump of his shoulders and the way he stared at him with a funny little smile whenever he wasn’t looking-

(The way he always followed Gavin if he went wandering out late, he or Michael, because it’s dangerous in these parts - filled quite literally with things that go bump in the night and _Jesus Christ why did they let Gavin go out alone_ -)

“Ryan,” Geoff says now, and it’s gentle and quiet and filled with something like guilt. “I’m not bringing him back.”

“What do you mean you’re not bringing him back?” 

“I mean,” Geoff says, “I can’t do it.”

“You’ve talked about it before though, you’ve told me about it - the things you can do - of course you can bring him back.”

“Let me rephrase it.” Something sterner in it now. Pained but sterner. “I _won’t_ bring him back.”

And that - that is when a cold hand clenches around Ryan’s heart because since last night, since he carried Gavin’s body back to the house - it didn’t hit him, not really, because he never quite thought he was actually gone. Thought it’d be a quick fix, a snap of Geoff’s fingers.

“Why not?” It comes out small, almost pitiful.

“Because,” Geoff says, very patiently, “Life doesn’t work like that. Not for you humans. You get one chance and… and that’s it. You can’t just bring someone back, not like that, not willy nilly - I would if I could Ryan but there’s _rules_.”

“No,” Ryan says - and steps forward now, into Geoff’s space. There’s something uneasy in his stomach, something cold and hard like stones. “There are no rules, there are… there are rules to science, there are rules to maths and logic but _this is not logic_ , this is - this is magic. You’re all _magic_. You can bring him back.”

“Ryan.”

Geoff touches him for the first time. Reaches up and grabs him by the shoulders and holds him steady and _squeezes_.

His hands are colder than Ryan thought they’d be.

“All magic comes with a price,” Geoff says. “And the price for bringing someone back from the dead would be - would be _immense_. It’s not you or me who’d pay it, either, it’s Gav, and I won’t - I won’t fucking do that to him, okay? I’m sorry. I know he was important to you.”

Ryan thinks, in an odd, detached sort of way, that the grief should probably be hitting him right about now. But it doesn’t. It still doesn’t seem quite real, that Gavin could possibly be gone forever.

If anything he’s just _angry._ A blind, blunt sort of anger that Geoff won’t _help_ him.

“I thought,” he growls out, and steps back, shaking Geoff’s grip off. “That he was important to you too.”

Geoff looks stricken. The flames die out over his skin and he curls back, into himself. Opens his mouth to speak but Ryan isn’t listening - turns and strides away, back down to his lab. The anger burns low in his gut but everything else is cold and numb, and the only thing he can think-

The only thing he can _think_ -

The only thing he can think is, _okay then, okay, so you won’t help me. I’ll do it myself_.

—

—

—

It’s not like Ryan made it his life’s mission to end up collecting strays.

That just sort of happened.

It’s the house, really. The house must have attracted them.

His most vivid childhood memories are of the holidays he took there, back when he was young. Summers spent running around the grounds of crazy old Grandpa Haywood. The pixies at the bottom of the garden and the boggarts running behind the walls of the attic and the forest at the foot of the hill that he must never go too far into for fear of trolls and goblins and werewolves.

That’s what sparked his interest in the fey, probably.

It’s different back in the cities. People don’t care so much. Aren’t exposed to much more than the occasional sleepy-eyed vampire lurking street corners or witches busking cheap magic tricks. They know they _exist_ , sure, but the interest in them is limited.

Even in the scientific community no one quite seems to care, since most humans have little contact with the fey unless they deliberately go looking - except for Ryan, Ryan who wants to expand a whole new branch of zoology towards these creatures, to understanding them. So when Grandpa Haywood dies and he leaves him the house in the will it doesn’t take much time to decide to pack up and leave. He’s already pretty ostracised from his peers, anyway (and for the last time that cow in the hole was a _controlled experiment_ ).

The house is right on the verge of the forest where the strangest of strange things lurk, and there’s swampland farther out, marshes and stretches of moor. Little country towns out here where less than half the population are human. A vampire commune just under two hours away, rumours of mermaids in the coast to the east. 

He sets out to observe and document and experiment and he’s at it for two months, alone in that big old manor, before Gavin knocks on his door one day.

“Are you the scientist dude?” is the first thing he says.

Ryan is rather startled because it has been literally weeks since he’s interacted properly with another human, and most of the creatures he’s been studying are non-sentient things or ones he can’t communicate with. He’s gotten used to the quiet, the solitude - and hadn’t realised anyone even knew he was here, that his presence was well known enough that randoms could come to his doorstep and identify him as the ‘scientist dude’.

Especially English randoms with messy hair and giant backpacks and incredibly manic grins on their faces.

“I… I am indeed a scientist,” he replies, when he’s got his senses back, and the grin widens.

“Top! I’ve come to, like, work for you.”

“Um… _what?_ ”

“Well, work _with_ you.” He’s already shouldering past Ryan into the house, looking around with a breath of awe. “Oh, this place is sweet. Big old country house. Just like back home! You’re right on the forest, too, bet you see all sorts of things.”

“Sorry, I think there’s been a misunderstanding here.” Ryan snags him by the back of the sweater and drags him back before he can make for the stairs leading to the lab. The man stumbles and then looks a bit surprised.

“You’re well strong,” he observes. “Do you work out? Thought you nerd types just sat in a lab all day.”

“I’m a naturalist,” Ryan says, rather awkwardly. “I… climb a lot of trees.”

“Naturalist? That sounds like someone who runs around _tackle out_ , so to speak.”

“You’re thinking nudist,” Ryan replies, drily, already wondering how his day came to this. “Like… David Attenborough but with magical creatures and lots more experimenting.”

“Yep, that’s what I’ve heard about you! And what does every David Attenborough need?”

“Peace and quiet in which to work?”

“A cameraman!” He swings his backpack onto the floor and opens it enough for Ryan to see the camera inside. “Gavin, by the way, what’s your name?”

“Ryan,” Ryan says, bemused, and still with half a mind to kick him out.

That changes the moment Gavin shows him his footage.

The thing is, Ryan has a lot of drive but not a lot of actual experience; save for childhood summers here at his grandpa’s place he’s grown up in the city hearing of the fey through stories, most of them urban legends. When he got out here he didn’t quite know where to begin looking. Got off to a very slow start.

Gavin is the opposite.

He has little idea about any of the biology behind these creatures, of the anthropology or ecosystems, but he knows where to find them and will hunt them down just to get them on film. His slow motion camera ( _borrowed_ , he insists, _totally didn’t steal this from some guy. Hahaha what do you mean it costs way more than I can afford I don’t know what you’re talking about_ ) has captured shot after shot of things that Ryan barely even knew existed.

Fairies and elves and tiny woodsprites that move faster than the eye can see - slowed down they’re captured in a detail that sets Ryan’s work forward exponentially. He quickly realises the benefit of having someone around to record everything.

Gavin is enthusiastic and fearless, and even if at first Ryan tells himself he misses the quiet he adjusts almost embarrassingly quickly to the other’s presence. Becomes accustomed to being able to tell him to fetch samples from the forest or type up the notes he writes by hand. 

It’s just them, for a while. Days spent trekking through the woodland looking for fairies, watching through the footage together at night. And Ryan wouldn’t admit - ever - that he was lonely before. After all, it’s not lonely if you don’t realise it. 

He gets used to Gavin, that’s all.

Then comes Geoff, who Gavin is responsible for in every possible way. It’s his bright idea to summon a demon (“ _For the vine,”_ is his reasoning, whereas Ryan’s is the rather more intellectual “ _For science_ ”) and it’s him who hunts down some giant leather-bound tome (also totally not stolen from the state library) and draws all the weird sigils in goat’s blood on the floor. Ryan is half-convinced it’s not actually going to work, because nymphs and dryads and vampires are one thing but angels and demons? That’s veering into a world of religion he’s not quite sure he believes in. But he’s interested to see what happens, anyway.

“Did we have to do this in the lounge?” is his only comment while Gavin sets it all up. “That blood’s not gonna come out of the carpet.”

“It adds character to the room,” Gavin replies distractedly.

“What now?” Ryan asks. “Stand in the middle and do the hokey pokey?”

“ _No_ , _Ry-_ an,” Gavin chides. “Now we light the candles and chant.”

“I’m not chanting,” Ryan says. 

“You have to,” Gavin insists, “I’ll feel stupid if I do it on my own.”

“You _are_ stupid,” Ryan replies, but he ends up doing it anyway if only to stop him whinging.

The explosion of blue fire destroys most of the carpet and two antique sofas. Ryan’s first instinct is to lunge to protect Gavin and Gavin’s first instinct is to lunge to protect his camera, and when the smoke clears there’s some sleepy-looking tattooed guy with horns standing in a giant scorch mark.

“Dude,” he says, blinking at the two of them, seeming rather unphased for someone who has just been abruptly ripped back to the land of the living. “We were just about to roast somebody. Like _live spit roast_. I’m gonna miss it now. I’m the Master Griller, they’ll fuck it up without me.”

“You nearly destroyed my camera!” Gavin informs him, and the demon’s eyes turn lazily in his direction.

“That’s what you get for summoning a demon, bitch.”

“It looks top in slow mo though,” Gavin says, turning back to review the footage.

“Sorry,” Ryan cuts in - he didn’t think this would work so they didn’t exactly prepare for what they would do once they did actually summon something; Gavin, of course, did not think beyond how cool it would look - “I’m a scientist, can you answer some questions for me?”

“Better watch out buddy,” the demon says, “Lots of scientists down in circle six. But sure. Might as well contribute to human knowledge while I’m up here.”

“Sorry. We’ll send you back as soon as we can.” Studiously avoiding mentioning the fact that he has no idea how.

The demon just shrugs. “Don’t mind that much, actually. It’s getting pretty boring down there these days. I might stick around.”

He does stick around.

He sticks around and eats all Ryan’s food and drinks all his alcohol and sort of just _lurks_ there watching them work, offering unhelpful commentary. He and Gavin get on like a house on fire because they both like dick jokes and would you rather questions far more than Ryan thinks is really normal for two grown men (well, man and demon). But with Geoff (as they were surprised to learn his name was; Ryan had been expecting something rather more archaic) around, two in the house becomes three.

Becomes _four_ when Michael shows up.

Like Gavin he turns up out of the blue on Ryan’s doorstep. By this point he’s realised that everyone in the countryside around them knows about him and is under the impression he’s some sort of mad scientist living in the house on the top of the hill (which is not true at all, he is undergoing a _very serious research study_ ) and it’s not uncommon for them to have the occasional visitor.

Michael, though, is not like any creature Ryan has ever seen before.

“Your eyes are funny!” Gavin informs him, the minute Ryan brings Michael into the lab.

“Fuck you too, Pinocchio,” Michael snaps back.

“I didn’t say they were _bad_ funny. What are you, anyway?”

“He’s dead,” Ryan says, calmly, clearing off part of his workbench and gesturing for Michael to sit down.

Gavin blinks a few times, obviously confused, and Michael rolls his eyes.

“I’ve been magically reanimated,” he informs him. “Now I heal from everything. Yay, immortality. Thus I have come to like, fucking contribute my body to science or whatever. Might as well be useful right?”

“So basically you’re Wolverine,” Gavin says, after a moment’s thought.

“No,” Michael replies. “ _No_. I’m nothing like Wolverine.”

“But you heal from everything-”

“ _No_.”

Ryan appreciates Michael seeking him out because he’s quite possibly the most fascinating thing he’s ever encountered. He expects him to stay for some tests and bum some free meals (although, as it turns out, undead people do not need to eat) but to his surprise he sticks around as well.

 _Boredom_ , is the excuse he gives. He and Geoff are mutually intrigued by one another and before long he starts getting on better with Gavin as well.

They’re not friends, though, the four of them. Not really, or at least Ryan doesn’t consider them so.

All of them fight a lot and most of the time they ignore each other, just doing their own thing around the place, and sometimes Ryan is pretty sure they’re all just using his house as a free place to stay.

But he gets used to them too.

Gets used to Michael volunteering for all the dangerous experiments and Geoff grilling them steaks over his magical blue fire and evenings spent sitting around swapping stories. Ryan starts off taking notes for the sake of posterity but by the end of the night he’s always given up. Just sits back and enjoys listening to them talk, and okay, maybe there’s something like friendship there after all, but not anything proper, not anything defined.

Gavin and Geoff go out to the swamp one night and come back with Jack, and this time there is not even a conversation about it. He just starts living at the house too and doesn’t ever really stop, even once he’s done helping Ryan with his research, and the same thing happens with Ray - Michael brings him back one day and he just sort of stays.

That’s how he ends up with five assorted creatures living in his house.

They still maintain a funny sort of distance from each other. There’s a stigma in most human cities to do with the fey, after all, and Ryan’s never used the word ‘monster’ around the others but he sees that fear, that hesitance, in the way Michael tenses up whenever Gavin comments on how weird his immortality is. In how Jack doesn’t like to be around when Ryan calls back to the university to report on his findings so far. In how Geoff never touches him or gets too close.

Ray has the worst of it; for all that he’s living there Ryan thinks it’s only because of Michael. He doesn't talk to Ryan much, Gavin either, and it’s only because Michael tells him that Ryan realises it’s because he’s afraid of losing control of his wolf side and hurting one of them accidentally. He’s fine with Michael and Geoff because neither of them get damaged easily, or at least not permanently, and Jack is more durable than a human.

But life goes on.

He continues his research and Gavin starts filming the stupid incidents that happen around the house as well as documenting everything Ryan does. And they get used to each other - get used to working around the kelp that always ends up in the bathtub whenever Jack takes a shower, and Ray leaving the house at night whenever he’s worried he’s gonna turn, and Geoff leaving scorch marks on almost everything he touches.

And somewhere along the line Ryan supposes it becomes less of a scientific study to watch them all and something sort of _fond_ grows in his chest - a realisation that he likes the house like this, lively and noisy and properly lived in.

But he doesn’t really expect it to go further than that - still half expects one or all of them to leave, to wander off again-

(Doesn’t think about how he’d miss them if they did-)

Except then he falls in love with Gavin.

—

—

—

“Who brought you back to life?” Ryan asks.

“Fuck off,” Michael replies.

Ryan realises in hindsight that it was probably fairly insensitive of him to just barge up to Michael’s room and fling open the door. The other man marched out of the room as soon as Ryan announced what happened to Gavin. Ray started to follow him but then paused, face contorting. Obviously struggling not to lose control as the grief hit. He left the house shortly after and Ryan knows he’s off now running the moor and howling his pain out. It makes something in his chest ache to think of it.

Michael’s bedroom is pitch black but Ryan can see his eyes at the other end of it, glowing in the darkness. He hovers in the doorway feeling awkward and intrusive but he _needs_ to know - if Geoff won’t help him there are other methods.

“Michael,” he says again. “Who brought you back to life?”

“I know what you’re thinking and it’s not gonna work,” Michael spits. “So just - fuck _off,_ okay? Jesus Christ, is this all just some big experiment for you? Whoops, Gavin’s carked it, better see what we can do with his body now. Jesus fucking _Christ_ -”

“It’s not like that,” Ryan snaps, but he knows Michael doesn't believe him. His voice breaks a little then where before it had been calm, too calm. Calm and _detached_ and he knows that’s what’s pissing Michael off, that he doesn’t seem to be showing emotion about this, but he knows once he starts-

Once he _starts_ , he’ll just. Break, in a way he hasn’t, _ever,_ and he’s - scared of it, or something to that effect, and it’s easier, easier to just think _it’s not real_ and _it’s not permanent_ and _we’re going to get him back._

Because he _is_ going to get him back.

But not with Michael’s help, it seems, and he retreats back down to the lab. 

It seems that magic will not be of much help to him; he doesn’t know enough about it and everyone who does is refusing to assist. But science, on its own, has limits, and resurrection is one of them.

 _A combination, then_ , he realises - it’s what he’s been working on this whole time, isn’t it? Working out how the fey fit into their world. To some extent trying to determine the laws that govern them. 

There have to have been others, he reasons. Others who have tried.

So he reads.

He is up the entire night poring over journals and articles and theses. Since the dawn of time humans have been preoccupied with death. With avoiding it. _Overcoming_ it.

One name stands out among the rest, one claim to have succeeded in the same way Ryan hopes to succeed now, combining science with sorcery. 

Victor Frankenstein. 

His quest was a little different - creating life from nothing, from a patchwork of corpse parts shambled together into a single body - but the theory is there. To bring life to the beast two things were required: lightning and an enchanted heart - this latter being the magical aspect that he failed time and time again without.

There are warnings written all over the journals. Horror stories of all the ways things went terribly wrong afterwards, but Ryan ignores them - focuses on the science of it. How it would theoretically work.

Gavin won’t heal.

Not the way Michael heals, which means that Ryan’s going to have to patch up the body before he brings it back. The thought of it makes him feel a little sick, because it’s… messy. He realises now exactly why Ray is so afraid of hurting them; whatever got Gavin out there in the woods - he thinks it may have been a wolf but isn’t sure, it was gone by the time he got there and he never thought to look - took him out easily and brutally. He never stood a chance.

—

Kdin Jenzen lives in a cabin on the other side of the forest. Ryan reads up on him before he goes and can’t quite help but be intrigued. A twenty-something year old warlock living out in the middle of nowhere who makes a living selling enchanted items on ebay. (He has a silver shooting star rating, though, which Ryan presumes means he’s legit. Hopefully. He’ll soon find out, anyway.)

He wakes up that morning with Jenzen’s account open on the computer before him and his head down on the desk, face stuck to the notes he’d been making where he fell asleep after staying up nearly all the night.

For a moment he doesn’t remember what’s going on and he half expects Gavin to come up next to him with a strong coffee the way he usually does after Ryan pulls an all-nighter. All obnoxiously loud _good-morning’s_ and _where shall we go adventuring today_ ’s and, sometimes, stupid joking kisses to the side of his face. Ryan always pushed him away at those until the day that he didn’t and now-

Now it comes back to him and he thinks, _oh_ , and a sudden rush of sadness hits him for the first time. Swells in his chest like it’s crushing his lungs, drowning him, and he can’t breathe.

He clenches his fists and squeezes his eyes shut and _breathes_ and thinks _he’s coming back, he’s coming back, of course he’s coming back_.

Tries not to think of all the reasons why this might be affecting him so much because he hasn’t cried for years, not since he was a kid, not even when his grandfather died, but now his eyes are burning and there’s a lump in his throat and-

 _He’s coming back_.

Jack stops him on the way out of the house. Ryan’s striding forth all stoic and determined like but Jack makes a beeline for him the minute he sees him, and the next thing he knows he’s being enveloped in a swampy hug. He lets out a startled little noise because he doesn’t _do_ hugs, not really, but Jack doesn’t let go for a long moment even when Ryan makes no move to hug him back.

“I was worried about you last night,” Jack says, when he finally pulls away.

Ryan tries to discreetly remove a piece of seaweed that’s stuck to his jacket. “Oh?” he says.

“Oh,” Jack replies. His eyes narrow, what little Ryan can see of them beneath all the green. They flicker to the backpack Ryan’s carrying, the car keys hanging from his hand. “Where are you going?”

Ryan hesitates.

Given Geoff’s reaction to the idea of bringing Gavin back - Michael’s too - he’s struck with the sudden fear that if he tells Jack, he’ll try to stop him. That maybe all of them would, it they knew what he was trying to do.

It’s confusing to him, because he thought - he thought they’d want this. When he told them what happened the looks on all their faces - the way Ray and Michael ran out almost immediately and Jack put his head in his hands and Geoff just _stopped_ \- fire went out and all - the quiet despondence that settled over the house afterwards leaving it feeling as empty and lonely as it had been when Ryan first arrived there, dust on all the mantles and air thick with the memories of his just-passed grandfather - Ryan had thought, maybe, that all of them would not be okay without Gavin.

 _He’s_ not okay without Gavin.

But Jack is looking at him now with something like suspicion and so - he lies.

“When humans die,” he explains - something patronising in his tone but he can’t quite get it to stop - “You can’t just leave it. You have to tell people. Get a death certificate. Let the government know. His family.”

“Oh,” Jack says again. He steps back, out of Ryan’s path. “You’re off to the city then?”

“Yeah.”

“I…” Jack’s voice cracks a little. He looks away. “I thought you might be leaving.”

Ryan stops in his tracks. There’s something small and too vulnerable in the way Jack says it. The two of them haven’t gotten that close - or at least, he didn’t think they had, but now that he pauses, now that he looks back on it, Jack’s the one who brings him food when he’s been working down in the lab for hours on end. Stays and talks to him about his experiments. Doesn’t complain or get bored when he gets carried away and starts going into technical explanations.

They spend more time together than he realised and he feels a sudden sort of pang.

“I’m not leaving,” he replies, and Jack wilts slightly in relief. “I’ll be back tonight.”

“Okay.”

He sees Ray when he starts pulling out of the drive down the hill. The man is making his way out of the forest, back towards the house. He has that haunted look he always gets just after he turns; his hair dishevelled, dark rings under his eyes. Something defeated to his face. It’s worse today. Ryan can tell he’s been crying and he’s struck with the sudden urge to pull up next to him. Open the door and offer to let him come with.

But he doesn’t.

Again, that fear that Ray will try and stop him. He drives past and they make eye contact through the windscreen and for a moment Ray’s eyes widen a little, in panic, like he too thinks Ryan is leaving.

Ryan’s not sure what the other man sees in his face.

He drives on alone.

—

Kdin doesn’t look much like Ryan expected a warlock would; then again he’s quickly growing to realise that none of this is quite like how the fairytales made it out to be.

“I could have sent you this in the post,” he says. His house is full of boxes and cabinets and that strange electric tingle in the air that Ryan can now identify as magic.

“Yeah no,” is all he replies with. “It might’ve been damaged.”

“Nah, it’s very durable.” He sets down a small wooden chest on the table between them and looks up, meeting Ryan’s eyes. Ryan braces himself, expecting some sort of judgement there - but there’s just a mild sort of curiosity. “I don’t normally provide these, you know.”

“I can pay.”

“That’s not it. Enchanted body parts are… special.” His mouth twists a little. “Organs, limbs, what have you - they take on a mind of their own when you start getting magic involved.”

“But it’ll work.”

“Yeah.” He taps his fingers thoughtfully against the table. “What condition’s your body in?”

“Not… great.”

“Ah. Well, it’s not gonna heal once this is in. This’ll reanimate it but it won’t actually bring him back to life, not properly. You’re thinking of necromancy, which is a whole other bag of cats.”

“I can patch the body up. The lightning will kick-start it. I’ve done my reading. I just need this to keep him alive once he’s up.”

Kdin nods. He pushes the chest across the table and in the moment of silence that follows Ryan can hear the heart beating inside the box, a rhythmic _thud-thud, thud-thud_.

“I’m not trying to put you off,” Kdin says quietly, “But it’s not gonna just be an easy fix. He’ll be… different. It might not be what you expect. Magic-“

“Magic always comes with a price, I know,” Ryan snaps, annoyed now. “Just take the damn money already, will you?”

—

The heart is red and glowing and very warm and there’s something oddly calming about holding it in his hand, feeling it pulse. _Come-back. Come-back_.

When he gets back everyone has closed themselves off in their rooms and all is empty and still. Ryan feels more alone in the house now than he ever did before the others got there.

He shuts himself away in the lab. Locks the door. And takes a deep breath before he moves to get the body from where he’s kept it on ice.

This is the part he was dreading.

It would be so much easier if Gavin just looked like he was asleep. Then he might’ve been able to tell himself this was just an operation, a surgery. A quick-fix.

But he doesn’t, he looks dead. Terribly, horribly dead, and his skin is pale and ice-cold to the touch and when Ryan looks at him he feels a bit sick.

He closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths and blocks everything from his mind. Pretends it’s just one of the cadavers he worked on back at university. It’s almost too easy to shut everything off.

He sews up what he can, mostly along the face and torso, but realises very quickly that there are parts which just can’t be salvaged. An arm, an ear, part of a leg. He tries but it looks messy and horrible and that’s not what he wants. 

 _I need replacement parts_ , he thinks, clinically detached. And then Frankenstein’s work comes to him again, and he knows what he has to do.

He waits until nightfall and feels sick all the while. Can’t sleep. The weather turns bad in the mean time and he tries not to see it as an omen. That would be illogical and he believes in a lot of things; fairies and werewolves and magical hearts. But not omens.

Everything is still dark and quiet when he finally leaves. It feels strange, like the house is dead too. When he’s driving out towards the graveyard he hears faint howls on the wind and wonders if it’s Ray. Or whatever killed Gavin.

When he arrives he pulls on his scarf and gets the shovel out of the boot and looks at his watch. Realises then, that it was about this time that he realised Gavin had been gone too long and went out to the forest to look for him. Exactly three days ago.

Three days and he’s already breaking the laws of science and magic and common human decency to get him back.

He takes a deep breath and goes to rob a grave.

—

—

—

Ryan doesn’t ever actually realise he’s in love with Gavin. It just sort of… happens.

Autumn is fading into winter and things change along with the weather. The fairies and the sprites disappear, and Ryan theorises that like some animals they go into hibernation. Michael reckons they just “go indoors” because it’s “fucking cold”. 

Jack is worried.

“Winter’s when the bad things come out,” he says one morning, at breakfast. Ryan is still trying to work out when, exactly, they all started having communal meals. Before they used to all just eat on their own. But there’s something comfortable about it, the six of them sitting around the kitchen together. Something he’s gotten used to.

“ _We’re_ the bad things,” Michael points out, with a feral sort of grin. Ryan can’t quite work out if he’s joking or not.

“The worse things, then,” Jack amends.

“Fab,” Gavin says, through a mouthful of toast. “I look forward to filming them.”

“ _You_ will not mess with that shit,” Geoff warns, pointing a fork at him. “I mean it. Don’t fuck with wendigos or banshees or any of that. Your films will be no good to you if you’re dead.”

“Alright, alright.”

“I _mean it_ , Gav,” Geoff repeats, and then, when Gavin just rolls his eyes, points at his toast and burns it to a crisp.

Ryan watches in silence, because there’s something in the way Geoff’s looking at Gavin now, something a little too protective. That morning is the start of the shift where he begins noticing, slowly, just how much closer they’ve all gotten over the autumn. 

It’s in the little things, mostly. How one day he’s coming up from the lab and passes by the lounge and pauses, because Michael, Gavin and Ray are sitting there in hysterics - it seems like they were playing a video game, which isn’t unusual, but Ray looks more relaxed than he’s ever seen him. He’s sprawled out easily on the couch between the other two, laughing openly, and as Ryan watches he reaches across to wrestle one of the controllers from Gavin. It’s notable because usually he won’t so much as touch the other man, overly paranoid of his ability to keep his wolf side under control. But after that day Ryan sees him opening up to Gav more and more, and soon after that he even starts venturing down to the lab now and then. Asks tentative questions about Ryan’s work.

It’s how Jack starts building stuff in the shed out the back of the garden. All the furniture in the house is old and half of it’s damaged in some way - the perils of living with so many supernatural creatures who have fire and claws and more strength than they know what to do with. He builds bookcases and shelves and things and slowly they start making their way into the bedrooms, the library, the study. Little touches that make it feel more like a home - _their_ home - than Ryan’s grandfather’s old place.

Michael and Ray start helping Jack out with it, too, though Ryan suspects they muck around more than they actually work. But Geoff will hang around them, usually with some alcoholic beverage in hand, and Ryan often sees him talking with Jack late into the night as well.

He still spends most of his time with Gavin.

With winter approaching they’re making the most of the limited hours of daylight they have. It doesn’t freeze over in this part of the country but it’s still pretty cold, and the leaves drop from the trees and leave everything bare and still and silent. It won’t be long before Ryan is forced to continue his research indoors, down in the lab. It feels a little like the end of an era, even though he knows, with a strange sort of certainty, that come spring Gavin will still be around and they can just pick up where they left off.

That all six of them will still be around.

The last day he assigns to outdoor research they spend out on the lake. Gavin’s determined to catch a water sprite but there aren’t many around, not with the weather so cold. Ryan wanders off after a while to note down which gnome dens in the area have been abandoned and which still appear to be in use, and by the time he gets back the sun is beginning to set.

He sort of freezes where he stands, just on the fringes of the treeline, because there’s something very pretty about the lake at this hour - the sun sinking just behind it painting the sky red and gold, reflected shimmering across the surface of the water. And Gavin, bent intently over his camera. More quiet and focused than Ryan ever sees him, bathed in that golden light. For a minute he just stops and stares and a funny sort of tickle starts low in his belly.

A twig snaps under his foot and Gavin jumps a bit, head whipping around before he realises who it is. Then he _grins_ at Ryan, and it hits him suddenly that he takes it for granted a bit, but Gavin always smiles when he sees him. Always seems properly, genuinely happy to be around him, and something about that sends a rush of affection through him. He smiles back.

“You get it?” he asks, starting forward.

Gavin shakes his head. He doesn’t seem too disappointed, though.

“Nah. Got a lot of shots of jumping fish, though, which is well cool.”

“Let’s head back, then. It’ll be dark soon.”

And he isn’t quite sure why for the rest of the night he suddenly finds himself craving Gavin’s attention. Feeling a tingle of something like disappointment when he goes off with Michael immediately after dinner, leaving Ryan to work alone in the lab. He’s done it plenty of times before but somehow, that night, for some reason - he oddly wants to be around him.

That feeling doesn’t go away.

He finds himself keeping track of Gavin more. Seeking him out first whenever he goes to hang out with the others. Looking forward to their stupid conversations at dinner. Missing his presence in the lab whenever he’s not there - which is less and less often, now. If seems, if anything, they’re spending more time together with each passing day.

It’s late, one night, in the lab. Ryan’s doing a lot of reading and highlighting, and it’s dull as ditchwater but when he gets in the zone he finds it difficult to stop working. Gavin’s sitting up with him, as he does most nights now. Ryan’s not sure when that started but now he’s gotten used to the other’s presence. He moved his computer down here and now he’s processing his slow mo footage and fiddling with his phone. It’s a stupidly late hour and on nights like this they often have ridiculous sleep deprived conversations. Ryan finds them more fun than he’s possibly willing to admit.

They’ve been sitting in companionable silence about half an hour now, engrossed in their respective work, when Gavin breaks the quiet.

“What do you think happens after we die, Ryan?”

“Jumping straight into the deep and meaningful, I see,” Ryan replies dryly, looking over at him.

Gavin is straddling his computer chair, leaning forward with his chin resting on his folded arms. He’s gazing intently at Ryan and suddenly he wonders just how long the other man has been staring at him.

“Seriously, though,” Gavin says. “What do you think happens? Because Geoff is like… Geoff claims he comes from hell, so. Hell must exist.”

“I don’t know,” Ryan muses. The question has actually made him think - a lot of Gavin’s do, if often about nonsensical things - “I think… I think Geoff’s hell might not actually be hell as religion knows it, if that makes sense. I don’t doubt he comes from another realm, but I also don’t think it’s where everyone who dies here goes.”

“Hmmm,” Gavin replies. “So you think we just… stop?”

“I guess so.”

“That’s weird,” Gavin declares, “I can’t imagine just stopping. I can’t imagine being dead. I kind of feel like I’d still exist.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

“I was reading about reincarnation the other day. I think I might believe in that now. The thing I was reading seemed very real.”

“Where were you reading it?”

“I dunno. The internet.”

“You can’t trust everything you see on there, Gavin.”

“I know. But they had evidence and all.” A pause. “You reckon we got souls, then?”

Ryan rubs his temples. It’s a deeper conversation than he expected to have at this time of night, but it’s interesting seeing Gavin like this. Genuinely invested in the answers he’s giving. Asking for knowledge rather than a quick laugh. Somehow Ryan likes this side of him, the way this odd seriousness contrasts against his usual carefree manner.

“You see,” Gavin goes on, “Michael came back from the dead, right? And I’ve talked to him about it a bit, y’know, and he’s like. Exactly the same person as he was before he died. Like he got put back into his body. So I’m thinking, we must have a soul, right? Something that’s just the life in us, the personality and all, and that’s what got put back in him.”

Ryan hadn’t realised he and Michael talked about things that deeply. Although, now that he thinks about it, the two of them have gotten exponentially closer. They still fight a lot - mostly because Gavin teases Michael and then he retaliates - but there’s something fond in it, now. They seem to make each other laugh a lot.

“Honestly, Gavin, I don’t know. As a scientist souls just seem… unfathomable. It’s not a part of the body we can see so I suppose I’m not convinced of its existence.”

“What’s the life that got put back in Michael then?”

“I suppose I’m inclined to agree with reductionism.”

Gavin flaps a hand at him somewhat irritably. “English, thanks, Mr I’m-smarter-than-you Big-words Haywood.”

Ryan rolls his eyes. “It’s like Francis Crick said.” It takes him a moment to recall the quote; he studied these things for a while but it was a long time ago. Seems like another life now. “ _You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, are no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules_. It’s all just neurons. Emotions - anger, hate, love - your thoughts, everything. Just connections firing in the brain.”

Gavin is silent for a very long moment. Ryan can almost physically see him thinking.

“That’s horrible,” he says, decisively.

Ryan blinks. “What?”

“That’s horrible, I don’t like it. What, you think we’re all just brains wandering around in bodies?”

“That’s… kind of… exactly what we are?”

“Nah. Nah, I don’t like it.” He shakes himself as though physically repelling the idea. “In fact it’s the worst bloody thing I’ve ever heard, you cynical bastard. You really reckon love is just brain-chemicals floating around up there?”

“There’s no denying that there are chemical reactions associated with…” He trails off, because Gavin is still shaking his head, and suddenly he wonders how the conversation switched so quickly from being about brains to being about _love_.

Wonders why, exactly, that suddenly has his heart pounding much faster. Why his usual eloquence has fled him and he can’t quite think of what to say.

“I don’t think you can reduce it to that,” Gavin continues, conversationally. “I mean, why do you feel it with some people but not others, then? There’s gotta be something else.”

“Maybe,” Ryan manages.

“Maybe?” Gavin’s eyebrows rise. “You ever been in love, Rye-bread?”

Suddenly he can’t speak. His mind goes white-blank and he quite literally cannot think of an answer, and he is terribly, acutely aware of Gavin’s gaze on him. Can’t bring himself to meet his eyes and isn’t sure why.

Gavin laughs, breaking the tension.

“Wow, okay. Didn’t mean to shock you into silence like that.” As suddenly as he brought this up, his interest seems to disappear; he stands and stretches with an exaggerated yawn. “Well! I am to bed. But I enjoyed our lovely little love conversation. Good philosophical chat Ry. See you in the morning.”

“Goodnight, Gavin,” he replies quietly, and doesn’t watch him leave.

Once he’s gone he puts his head in his hands. Lets out a long exhale. He isn’t sure why he suddenly feels peculiar. Giddy, almost, but in a nervous sort of way.

 _You ever been in love_?

It shouldn’t have been a hard question. He knows already that the answer is _no_. Except now - now it feels close to a lie, or at least not _entirely_ true.

As with everything he cannot rationalise, he shoves it away to dwell on later.

Things are different after that, maybe because they don’t go out on expeditions any more. But something has shifted between them. Sometimes Ryan feels like Gavin is avoiding him - he’ll leave the house with the others to go on long rambles while the daylight’s strong, knowing that Ryan’s too busy to come along - starts hanging out more with Michael and Ray, or Geoff, even starts helping Jack with his building (which is nothing short of a miracle given how lazy he usually is).

But other times - other times he’ll catch Gavin staring at him, or the other man will suddenly focus all his attention on him. Draw him into as many conversations as he can. Stay up all night with him in the lab.

It’s hot and cold and not at all helping Ryan work out where they stand with one another. He knows something is happening but can’t quite work out what. Only that their dynamic has changed somehow.

Gavin kisses him, sometimes. Goodnight or good morning or when Ryan does something nice for him. They’re always joking things that he laughs off immediately - either deliberately slobbery and gross or light and pecking, and at first Ryan always pushes him away, embarrassed - because he’s noticed him doing it to the others, too, and sees the way he always darts shy glances at them afterwards. Like he’s gauging a reaction. And Ryan’s a fucking scientist, he knows an experiment when he sees one, but he can’t quite work out exactly what Gavin’s experiment is. Why he’s involved in it.

Why, eventually, he starts just rolling his eyes instead of shoving him away.

The day before Gavin dies it snows.

They are all delighted by it, because this area doesn’t get snow much, and they go outside immediately to fool around in it. Even Ryan follows, and he can see the others side eying him when he does. Seeming almost curious at him coming out with them.

He’s not stupid. He knows he comes across as a workaholic. Knows that they all sort of think he has a stick up his ass because he spends so much time down in the lab - because he documents and records everything he comes across.

He can’t help it.

He moved around too much in his youth, shifting degrees and fields and colleges trying to work out what he was interested in. Didn’t make enough ‘meaningful connections’ or what have you - even when he did settle on a field his interest in the fey isolated him from his peers.

He supposes he’s just been alone too long. Taken care of himself to the point where the idea of letting someone else do it is embarrassing. 

The thought of getting close to the others is awkward to him but today, in the snow, it becomes excruciatingly apparent that somehow, without realising it, he has anyway.

The snowball fight is instigated by Gavin, escalated by Geoff, and ends with them splitting into two teams (‘lads’ and ‘gents’ as they end up calling themselves), engaging in icy warfare around the grounds of the house and down into the fringes of the forest. They all get perhaps embarrassingly into it, but Ryan doesn’t think he’s ever seen Ray let himself go so much, laugh so much - and he feels, abruptly, much closer to them all.

He’s stalking through the forest alone, having lost both his teammates, when a snowball hits the back of his head and he stumbles, whipping around. A high-pitched squeaky giggle alerts him immediately to who it is.

“I know you’re out there, Gavin,” he calls.

“No you don’t,” Gavin shouts back, which actually _confuses_ Ryan for a moment with the sheer stupidity of the statement, and while he’s standing there distracted Gavin throws another snowball.

He’s cleverer than they all give him credit for because he doesn’t aim for Ryan, he aims for a branch on the tree above him that’s sagging with snow. The whole thing comes down on his head, knocking him off his feet. He gasps, winded - immediately cold and wet and absolutely covered in sleet - and Gavin rushes over to him, laughing hysterically. He has his camera in hand, filming everything.

“Did you see that? Did you see how I just took you down?”

“I _lived_ it,” Ryan gasps, trying to get his breath back.

“Ha haaa! Gavin Free, master of projectile motion. Did you _see_ the arc on that snowball. That was a thing of beauty.” 

He holds a hand out to help Ryan up and in a fit of vindictive mischief Ryan seizes it and yanks him down to the ground. Gavin squawks as he falls, struggling wildly as Ryan scrapes up a handful of snow and shoves it down the back of his shirt.

“Ah! Ooh! No, Ryan - ahh Jesus that’s cold.” He makes a series of shrill, birdlike noises as he shakes himself, trying to get it out, and Ryan laughs at him. A wilder, more carefree laugh than anything he usually emits.

Gavin pauses at the sound, grinning up at him. His face is flushed from the exertion of their game, cheeks red from the cold. Lips chapped. His eyes look very blue against the white of their surroundings. Ryan finds himself transfixed, staring at him, unable to break his gaze away. That odd nervous thrill in his stomach again.

Gavin is staring at him too, but after a moment he looks away and gives a nervous sort of laugh. He sits up a bit, brushing himself down, and Ryan realises he’s shivering.

“Shit, are you cold?” he asks - they’re all pretty bundled up against the weather - Gavin shrugs and starts grinning again.

“Only because you shoved a bloody lot of ice down my back, you pillock.”

“Sorry,” he says. And then, on some weird impulse, takes off his scarf and winds it around Gavin’s neck, since he doesn’t have one. Gavin just sort of stares at him and after a moment Ryan drops his hands, feeling suddenly awkward again.

But then Gavin smiles.

“Thanks, lovely Ryan!” he declares. And then leans up and kisses him, like he usually does to take the piss, except this time there’s something different in it, something less casual. And this time it lands on his lips instead of his cheeks or his forehead. He freezes, and Gavin freezes, and in that moment Ryan can only hysterically wonder if the kiss on the lips was intentional or if Gavin’s aim is just really, really bad.

It is brief and it is awkward and Gavin pulls away first, face red, and rubs at the back of his neck.

“Ah, um,” he says, eloquently.

Ryan opens his mouth. Later he will wonder how things might have been different if they hadn’t been interrupted in that moment. If he’d had the chance to say something or if they’d been forced to react to what had just happened. Because maybe, even then, they were close enough that all it would have taken was one little push.

Maybe if they’d worked things out then things would not have been awkward, and Gavin would not have left the house alone the next night.

But as it is, Geoff comes screaming into the clearing, a hail of snowballs raining mercilessly after him as Ray and Michael follow in hot pursuit, and Gavin jerks away from Ryan - scrambles to his feet and jogs to join his teammates.

There’s something burning in Ryan’s chest and his heart is pounding. He can already see Gavin laughing it off over with the others - can practically see him trying to brush it off as an accident, as nothing - and tries to force himself to do the same.

Except he can’t quite, not really, and there’s an awkward tension between the two of them the entire rest of the day. And the entire night, a night which Gavin spends in his own room instead of down in the lab like he usually does.

The next day the snow has all gone. It’s black and slushy and ugly out on the road but Ryan goes out driving anyway. He tells himself it’s because he needs to pick up groceries from the city but really, he knows, it’s because he can’t look Gavin in the eye without his brain going into overdrive and something about that scares him - he’s not quite ready to dwell on everything that might be changing yet. 

It’s not like he means to avoid him.

He gets back later than intended and the house is quiet, sleepy. Everyone sluggish with having spent a lazy day indoors in front of the fireplace where it’s warm, considering it’s nearly hitting the negatives outside.

Ryan retreats to his lab without really talking to any of the others, and some time that evening Gavin raps at the door.

“Can we talk?” he asks, quietly. 

Normally he doesn’t ask. Normally he barges straight into whatever conversation he wants to have, and something about how unnatural the question is makes Ryan stiffen and pause.

Suddenly, he is afraid. Suddenly, he wants to put it off, as much as possible.

So he replies, “I’m busy right now,” and it comes out a little more curtly than he intended - a defensive mechanism more than anything else, falling back on what he knows (objectivity, impartiality _, detachment)_. But Gavin just nods, and leaves it, and exits quietly. And Ryan goes back to work.

That night Gavin goes for a walk alone.

—

—

—

“Ryan,” Jack says.

He blinks a few times, coming back to himself, and only then realises that he’s standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding an empty coffee mug. He isn’t sure quite how long he’s been there.

Jack is right in front of him, eyes wide with concern. Half reaching out to touch him.

“Sorry,” Ryan croaks. “Zoned out for a minute there.”

He shakes himself, trying to wake up a little. His brain feels dull, fogged over. Too little sleep and too much stress leading to a near constant ache at the back of his head. He reaches up to rub his face, grimacing. He looks terrible, he knows. Dishevelled and unshaven and probably half mad with exhaustion. 

But to be honest, Jack doesn’t look much better. He’s all sort of sad and wilted. It’s hard for a swamp monster to look put together at the best of times, but even now Ryan can see he is far more unkempt than usual.

He puts his mug down in the sink. Remembers he came here to get food and heads to the cupboard to grab something, acutely aware of Jack’s eyes tracking his every move. A rumble of thunder from outside makes his heart pick up. _Soon_.

“Ryan…” Jack does touch him now. Tentatively rests a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he replies. Grabs his muesli bar and starts to head back down only for Jack’s grip to tighten on his arm. “What?”

“Ryan, you’ve been down there for two days straight.” There’s raw concern in Jack’s voice now. “I fucking knocked a hundred times, Ray did too - you haven’t been out of that lab in literally forty-eight hours.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“With _what_?”

“You’ll see.” Another rumble of thunder - and then the patter of rain against the windows, quickly growing in volume. “I’ve got to go, Jack, the storm’s starting.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Jesus Christ, Ryan, I’m worried about you - you haven’t slept, you haven’t eaten-”

“Eating right now.” He shoves half the bar in his mouth. Then looks at Jack, again, and softens a little, because it’s not just Gavin he cares about. The sight of the other man so deflated strikes something in him, twists something painful in his gut. “I’m sorry. How are all the rest of you holding up?”

Jack perks up a little at the question. “I’m fine,” he replies. “Just… working through it. The others aren’t taking it too well. Michael still barely leaves his room. Geoff’s been destroying things around the forest, he’s, ah, not coping great. Ray…” He trails off, shaking his head a little, and something cold grips Ryan because concern for Ray is always a faint present thing at the back of his mind. It never really comes to a head but he’s always just sort of _worried_ about him. 

“Ray’s not doing so well. He’s out of the house a lot,” Jack says, and seems to wilt even more. “Transforming a lot too. He can’t really control it right now, even less than he used to. He’s in here now, though, he’s asleep.”

“That’s good. He should rest.” Ryan would be more worried if he didn’t know that in a few hour’s time all of this will have blown over. Gavin will be back with them and everything will get back to normal. “I’ll go check on them later, okay?”

“Ryan-”

“I really have to go; time sensitive experiment and all that.” He shakes Jack’s hand off and heads downstairs before the other man can protest further. Is careful to lock the door behind him.

He pauses, taking a few deep breaths.

The weather forecast is on his side; the storm today is perfect timing (and he doesn’t believe in omens but the convenience of it… the convenience of it gives him some sort of hope). He supposes in this day and age electricity might work just as well as lightning, but in the spirit of things he prefers that brute, raw force of nature. Thinks it might lend something extra to it all.

He crosses over to his workbench and looks down.

The last two days have been a blur. He brought the body from the graveyard back to the lab. Cut off everything he needed and reattached it to Gavin.

Looking at the body now, he frowns.

He’s thawed it out, so it’s not quite so cold and frozen looking. But it’s still stiff with rigor mortis and there’s a pallor to the skin that he knows won’t go away. The stitches in his face are the worst part; Ryan tried to make them as subtle as possible but they’re still noticeable and he knows that’s not something they can hide.

The mismatched body parts only add up to make Gavin look like the patchwork monster from the sketches in Frankenstein’s journals.

But it’s still _Gavin_ , underneath it all. And Ryan’s just hoping against hope that when he wakes up, when he starts walking and talking - that he’ll just sort of light up. That his personality, his spirit - ( _his soul, maybe)_ \- will animate the patchwork puppet of a body.

Then it’ll be him. Then he’ll properly be back.

As it is, the corpse is now hooked up to wires, connected at all the nerve endings, the brain stem, all linked to the tall lightning rod he’s got leading all the way up to the roof of the house. He’s already put the heart in - it stopped its magical beating when he sewed it up but he knows the electricity will jumpstart it. All he needs to do is attach a few final wires. Then wait. 

Another crash of thunder, violent enough that he feels the old house shake around him. The rain is so loud he can barely hear himself think. There’s an odd disruption going on the other side of the room - he thinks Jack might be pounding on the door. But the rain is noisy and he can ignore it.

A flash of lightning paints the room white. The machines begin to hum. Ryan remembers the pictures from the journal; great contraptions with glass domes dancing visibly with electricity. His are sleeker, safer, but it means he can’t see what’s going on.

If it’s working or not.

“Ryan!”

Jack’s definitely at the door now. A break in the storm makes his muffled voice entirely audible. He’s thumping away, obviously intent on being let in. Ryan grits his teeth in annoyance.

More thunder. Ryan leans forward, bracing himself on the edge of the table. It feels like his insides have turned to stone, cold and hard and rock-heavy. _It has to work. It has to_. He clenches the bench so hard his fingers turn white.

The next flash of lightning is violent in its intensity. The body on the table jerks. He jolts upright, leans over it. Half-goes to touch but catches himself, forces himself to stand back. To observe. 

The wires hum and crackle and the corpse writhes and dances. And then falls still, and for a minute Ryan can’t breathe. Because the storm is fading now - it was a quick one, it seems; it’s still drizzling outside but the worst of it is over and _no_ and _it has to have worked_ because there’s not gonna be another chance - not soon, anyway - for a second he is terribly afraid.

Then he feels it. A twitch of a finger next to his, where it’s resting on the table beside Gavin’s hand. He rears back with a gasp, watching, waiting-

On the bench Gavin’s eyes fly open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got wildly out of hand. Thanks so much for the prompt <3


	2. gavin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TW: Body horror (in the vein of Frankenstein's monster).**

**ii. gavin**

Gavin comes back to life with a jolt like a hypnic jerk.

For a long moment he does not know where he is, only that he can’t see and he can’t move and he can’t _breathe._ There is a feeling in him like his nerves have been set on fire, a burning electricity coursing through him. Like he is being pulled apart from the inside. Like he is caught helpless in a maelstrom being thrown every which way, tumbled and turned upside down except he’s not moving, he’s not moving, he can feel a hard flat surface under his back but everything around him is awhirl-

“Gavin.”

The voice is distant and distorted as though his ears are full of water, but it grounds him, settles him, even if in his confused haze he can’t quite tell who it is. He feels hands on him, pulling what feels like wires from his body, and slowly, slowly the lightning in his veins fades and flickers away leaving him with nothing but a dead sort of exhaustion. He realises his eyes are open but everything above him is white. He blinks furiously and slowly, slowly his vision clears and the roaring in his ears fades.

A bright light above him - machines he doesn’t know the purpose of - and a familiar face looming over him, mouth twisted in worry.

He feels oddly numb.

Numb like he should be able to feel something but _can’t_ \- like he’s been out in the cold too long - except for his heart. His heart which is pounding so hard that he feels as though it should hurt - (it doesn’t) - and is oddly _warm_. Like the sun trapped inside his chest. But the rest of him still feels loose, detached, as though his whole body has gone to sleep, and he tries to move but can’t, except to realise that he’s shaking all over.

“Gavin,” the voice says again, and then hands tug him gently upright, supporting all his weight as they guide him to fall forward, against a warm chest. He still can’t move, still can’t stop shaking - can’t quite work out what’s happening - but as the man’s arms wrap around him, squeezing protectively, the fear fades away at least for the moment, because he feels _safe_. 

“Gavin, Gavin, Gavin…”

His voice is ragged, desperate in a way that Gavin’s never heard from him before. Never heard him say his name like _that_ , frantic like it’s the most important thing in the world to him right now, and he opens his mouth to try and reply but his throat is dry and his voice is gone. 

He tries again, forcing it out past teeth that won’t stop chattering - it comes out quiet and hoarse but it’s _there_ and he feels the other’s body stiffen against him-

“Ryan…”

—

Earlier.

Ryan is standing in the kitchen brewing a cup of tea and Gavin is lurking by the stairs watching him. Clutching the bannister in a white-knuckled grip, holding on so hard it hurts. 

Everything is deceptively peaceful both in the house and out; the heavy winds that wracked last night have died down and all outside is quiet and still. Just the sky with its brilliant sparkling stars, so many of them visible out here in the countryside. The dark forest down below the hill silent with winter. And in here; the others are all off somewhere, sleeping or reading or playing Xbox. He can’t hear anything except the bubble of water in the kettle.

His eyes trail down Ryan’s back. Those stupid ratty jumpers he wears that make him look like a Grandpa. The horrifying Dad jeans. The hunch of his shoulders, posture bad from hours spent bent over books and screens in the lab.

His chest tightens.

_Talk to him._

God, it should be easy - heaven knows Ryan finds it hard to shut him up on the best of days - but he can’t. The thought of taking so much as another step forward has his stomach churning because-

Because-

Because it’s hitting him now, all over, everything that’s been building up the last few weeks.

The fact that as he watches Ryan pour the kettle he realises that he knows exactly how he makes his tea - how he does practically _everything_ , the ins and outs of his daily routine. That for some reason he’s committed to memory every food he likes and doesn’t like-

That his gaze lingers too long as Ryan turns to chuck a teabag in the bin, eyes scanning over his glasses - which he’s always liked; they age him but in a good way, give him that Professor-y vibe that he finds perhaps a bit too attractive - his dishevelled hair, the scruff of beard from where he hasn’t shaved in too long-

That he’s become so used to spending his nights down in the lab with the other man that now that he isn’t he doesn’t have much idea of what else to do, that even now part of him longs to just be there with him, in his company-

That he kissed him today and it wasn’t quite an accident.

Ryan starts to turn towards the door and Gavin’s chest seizes up. He forces his fingers open where they’re gripping the bannister and turns, hurrying off down the hall to the living room. It’s dim and quiet in there, the others all off in their rooms it seems, and he throws himself down on the sofa, letting out a grunt as the air rushes out of his lungs. The cushions have long lost their spring.

_Okay. Okay._

Back flat on the couch. Folds his hands over his stomach; stares up at the water-spotted ceiling of this old house he now calls home and thinks, _alright, okay._

Because it’s not like he’s in denial.

It’s not like he hadn’t realised before today that he liked Ryan, that he was interested, all that and more - it’s not like he hasn’t spent nights lying awake mulling it over in his mind. Indulging in stupid little fantasies like the thought of what it might be like for Ryan to grab his hand on one of their little forest romps. To come up behind him while he’s bent over the phantom and wrap his arms around his waist and lean in to kiss him.

It’s not like he hasn’t play-flirted with Ryan a hundred times over - the reactions were inconclusive; depending on his mood he’d either flirt back, act awkward or snap at Gavin to get back to work- 

It’s not like he doesn’t know what he wants.

But acting on it, that’s something else entirely. Because he has this thing, okay, he can’t… talk to people. Not without getting some alcohol in his system first. Girls or boys or whatnot, some terrible innate social awkwardness that rises up whenever he catches the eye of someone at a pub or so much as thinks about giving them his number. A sudden crushing fear of rejection even from people who mean nothing to him-

(Let alone people who _do_ -)

_I kissed Ryan_ , he realises with dawning horror. He’s been angsting about it all last night, and all today, and it never quite seemed real but now, lying here, he remembers it in vivid detail. _I kissed Ryan_ and it was quick and awkward and after-

After-

Ryan’s been avoiding him all day.

_Jesus Christ_. That sick fear starts up in him, the way it always does when someone _does_ turn him down. A weird sort of insecurity that there must be something deeply wrong with him, some alternate reason than the simple fact that they’re not interested. It’s worse somehow with this, because it’s not some random in a bar.

It’s _Ryan_.

“Gav?”

He looks up to see Michael, hovering in the doorway. Just the sight of him makes him feel better, which some would probably call pathetic, but Gavin can’t help it. He likes Michael, probably a bit too much, and whenever he sees him something small and happy always lights up in him.

Given his current emotional state, though, he can do little more than force a smile and a wave that Michael sees straight through, because he frowns and strides across the room to flop heavily down beside Gavin, making the old sofa cushions creak.

“Gavvy Goo,” he coos, ruffling Gavin’s hair vigorously enough to make him squirm. “What’s wrong?”

“Existential crisis,” Gavin lies, and Michael scoffs.

“I’ve told you to stop thinking about space, idiot. It’s too complex for your brain to handle.”

“It’s not a space-related one, Michael.”

“Ah. Something a little less vast than the purpose of humanity in this ever-expanding universe.”

“Yeah.” He sighs, digging his toes into the couch cushions, and then squeaks when Michael hauls him back to rest half-in his lap.

“You want to talk about it?” he asks, quick and gruff but _sincere_ , arms dropping comfortably down around Gavin’s shoulders.

Michael’s an asshole, Gavin learned this very quickly, but he takes care of his friends. And somewhere along the line, all five of them became his friends, Gavin and Ray especially. And Gavin generally skates through life with very few problems (and blissfully ignoring the ones he does have), but he’s seen the way Michael interacts with Ray. How often he takes the time to check on the other man, even when he’s in his transformed state and running out in the forest, risking bodily injury to make sure he’s okay. How he insistently hangs out with him, trying to get him to open up while simultaneously knowing how and when to give him space; when to tell the others to leave him alone as well.

Everything about that makes him trust Michael. Enough, at least, to hesitantly admit, “I think I fucked up.”

“Well, that’s a given with you,” Michael says, but without malice. “Whatcha do?”

“I’ve made things awkward with someone.”

He sees Michael raise his eyebrows and realises immediately that there’s only five people he interacts with on a regular basis, and they all live in this one house.

“Is this about your raging crush on Ryan?” Michael asks, and Gavin splutters.

“I... what... no... how do you-”

“Dude, it’s glaringly obvious,” Michael says, hooting with laughter. Gavin flushes, but there’s nothing mean in Michael’s voice, and it’s almost a relief to hear someone else say it. “Has been for a while. To everyone apart from Ryan, that is.”

“Well, I think he knows now,” Gavin grumbles, and Michael snorted.

“So now you can actually get together instead of this stupid little dance you’ve been doing around each other for weeks now?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because I’ve wrecked things now.” He reaches up, covers his face with his hands. Presses his hands to the closed lids of his eyes until it hurts. “He’s been avoiding me all day and... I guess he doesn’t… think he hates me now. Think I might have bollocksed this one badly.”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Michael chides, sternly. He grabs Gavin’s wrists and yanks his hands away from his face. “You hear me? Ryan’s as emotionally constipated as you are when it comes to this shit. You can’t just assume you know what he’s thinking. Fucking go talk to him about it.”

“I can’t!”

“Why not?”

“ _Because_ ,” Gavin insists.

“Well, now you’re just being a coward,” Michael says, and stands up. Gavin yelps as he slides off his lap.

“ _Mi_ -chael,” he cries, indignantly, but Michael just scoffs at him before leaning down until their faces are level.

“My help ends here,” he says, not unkindly. “It’s on you to go talk to him and find out what's up.”

Gavin groans and flings an arm up over his face again. Knows Michael is right, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. He hears the other man leave the room but doesn’t move himself for a good while, letting his thoughts drift mindlessly. Mostly he thinks of the last few months. How happy he’s been, here in this house with the others. How it’s felt to find a place he finally fits in.

It’s all of them, of course - his friendship with Michael, his more tentative relationship with Ray. How quickly he clicked with Geoff. He’s grown closer to Jack over the last couple of weeks too.

But mostly it’s Ryan. All the times they got up at the asscrack of dawn to walk in the forest. Their shared delight whenever they discover something particularly awesome. All-nighters down in the lab. Cold drinks and napping by the lake in the summer. All the laughs they’ve had, all the good times - that can’t just vanish, surely.

It’s those memories that fuel his courage, because no matter what he did there’s no way Ryan could _hate_ him, not after they’ve gotten so close these last few months - right? He still feels nervous, though, when he heaves himself off the couch and drags his feet down to the lab. It takes him five minutes to work up the courage to knock on the door. His thoughts take on Michael’s voice, for some reason, chiding him - _fucking idiot, you’re a fucking cowardly idiot, come the fuck on. You think it’ll be much worse than it is. He doesn’t hate you. All you need to do is talk to him._

Taking a deep breath, he raps on the doorframe.

Ryan is bent over a book. He turns in his seat and when he sees Gavin his shoulders go very stiff. Gavin bites his lip, fear seizing his heart.

_It’s okay. It’s okay. You think it’ll be much worse than it is_.

“Can we talk?”

There’s a very long, very awkward pause in which Gavin can’t quite get himself to breathe. Then he sees Ryan flick his gaze away, and his heart sinks - 

“I’m busy right now.”

Gavin can’t leave fast enough. A lurching sickness is tearing through him because Michael was wrong, wrong, _wrong_ \- Ryan won’t even _talk_ to him - he can hear himself heaving gasping breaths but it doesn’t feel like he’s getting any air in his lungs. Nothing but a crushing shame. _You’ve ruined things_ and _he must hate you now_ and _now things will never be the same_ because even if Ryan can get over this _he_ can’t - has never quite been able to look at people again after they’ve rejected him, some deep seated embarrassment taking him over-

He needs to get out of here.

Needs to get out of the house, if only for a little while, because suddenly it feels like a prison, like the very walls are mocking him with their memories-

He doesn’t stop to grab a coat, doesn’t stop to tell anyone where he’s off to.

Just needs to get _out_.

—

—

—

Gavin grows up surrounded by magic.

Then again, so does just about everyone in England. That’s what he notices first when he moves to America; just how much people don’t know or care about the fey. How different it is there.

In England there are witches and warlocks on every street plying runes and charms and curses. In England the fairies and sprites are bigger, slower - children make games of catching and chasing them. Vampires and dryads have long assimilated into human communities and you don’t have to go far into the countryside to find gnome and giant settlements.

So the thing is, most people become desensitised. Bored with it. So used to being surrounded by these things that they don’t give it a second thought when they have to wipe away the squashed remains of pixies who’ve gotten caught in their cars’ windscreen wipers.

Not Gavin.

He spends his childhood and high school years just nine miles from Oxford where the university has a whole branch dedicated to supernatural studies, though progress tends to be limited in that area - that’s the thing about magic; it’s constantly changing, evolving, hard to pin down - and when he starts getting into slow motion that’s where he mostly gets sent. Easy jobs for a newbie; filming stationary things for the professors. Like sprites trapped in jars or the reactions in beakers when you drop fairy dust in different solutions.

And the thing is, maybe he’s a tiny bit bored with England as well - he’s seen (and filmed) everything here a thousand times over - but these professors speak of new and exciting things. Djinn and phoenixes and Chinese dragons; endless types of demons and spirits. 

So when the chance comes to go to America for work, he leaps it at, anticipating a whole new world of mystery and magic.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

The American cities are disappointingly devoid of anything fey; most people barely spare a thought for them. He hears the occasional thing about mermaid sightings or vampire murders but other than that everything is coldly, rigidly secular, and for an entire year he’s stuck filming advertisements without so much as a whiff of anything magic. 

He misses it with an intensity that’s almost painful and after 365 days without seeing a single fairy he thinks _fuck it_ and takes off into the night with a camera worth tens of thousands of dollars and no real plan of just what the hell he’s going to do next. Hitchhikes into the country and finds, to his delight, a whole different world to the cities out there in the rural areas. _Here_ are the forests and marshes and moors teeming with magical life - creatures that are just different enough to those in England to intrigue him, and he spends three weeks slumming it in bus shelters and the occasional country inn before he hears mutterings about some scientist researcher guy living in the big old house at the top of the hill.

“Weird sort of fellow,” seems to be the general consensus, but all Gavin can think of is the professors back home in Oxford and the possibility of sleeping in the same place for more than one night.

So off he goes.

—

Gavin likes Ryan a lot.

At first he’s like, _okay, random somewhat-antisocial scientist dude_ , and to be honest he’s pretty nervous of him. He’s fairly certain it doesn’t come across that way, because he can project a nearly flawless facade of confidence when he wants to, but something about Ryan is a bit unsettling. Maybe it’s his big spooky house or the fact that he’s sort of quiet at first and stares really intensely (and creepily) at things. And that his dry sort of wit intimidates Gavin a little; he is obviously a very, very smart man.

But quickly - quickly he comes to realise that Ryan is actually just a _giant fucking nerd_ who is as ridiculously passionate about the fey as Gavin is.

The look on his face when he sees Gavin’s footage from the last few weeks and back in England is _spectacular_ ; Gavin’s hanging back a bit nervously because he’d shown his bosses and co-workers a couple of the clips and they’d all been pretty blasé about it. “Whatever” and “That’s cool” and didn’t seem to realise that, hey, these are _incredible supernatural creatures are you not amazed._

Ryan is amazed.

Ryan is very, very amazed. In fact he is practically fangirling over it, and that’s all Gavin needs to start giggling kind of hysterically.

“I can get more of these, you know,” he says, and Ryan turns to him with his serious-stare that Gavin is finding less creepy by the second.

“I’ve been having trouble finding anything in the woods,” he admits.

“I can help with that too,” Gavin replies quickly. “I know all about how to find this shit, back in England they’re everywhere - I‘m good at hunting them down. I can help you.”

He sees Ryan’s eyes rake over him and then narrow suspiciously, and shifts his feet self consciously. His hair’s all over the place and he’s carrying all his worldly goods plus an incredibly expensive camera around in a single giant backpack. He’s been sleeping in bus stops and there are leaves and dirt stuck to his sweater and he hasn’t eaten much in the last few days. He’s a bit of a mess and he knows it.

But then Ryan nods.

“Okay,” he says. “Get settled in then.”

“You mean I’m hired?”

“I could do with a research assistant. Someone to film my studies.”

“ _Top_ ,” Gavin cries, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. And then on some weird sort of impulse lifts his hand for a high-five. Ryan stares at it for a moment before his lips tug up into something like a smile and he high-fives Gavin back.

That is the beginning of what Gav likes to think of as the ‘era of awesome’. Changing fey zoology studies in America one forest romp at a time.

Ryan is sort of weird at first. Not bad-weird. He reminds Gavin a bit of kids he used to know from way out in the country; lost in his own little world. Simultaneously confident yet socially awkward, like he wants to be friendly but also not get close to anyone - which Gavin, of course, immediately takes as a challenge.

He soon gets used to it, though, Ryan’s little idiosyncrasies. The particular way he needs his lab to be organised and how he pronounces a bunch of words wrong because he learned them from reading. How when he has trouble falling asleep he’ll sit up in the lab reading thick tomes on mythology until he passes out with his head down on the desk.

And God help him but Gavin starts to find it _endearing_. Starts growing closer to Ryan far, far more quickly than he ever has with someone else before, except maybe Dan.

There’s a lot to like about him, though.

The way he gets so _excited_ over all their new discoveries; how he understands exactly how complicated the camera is to run and lets Gavin know when he’s done a good job in a way that too many of his old bosses didn’t (and it’s not like he fishes for praise, but he has enough self esteem issues that it’s nice, it’s reassuring) - how he plays along with Gavin’s stupid questions and always tries to actually think of scientifically accurate answers.

How he _explains_ things to him, with far more patience than most other people have. Gavin’s not stupid but he also doesn't take much entirely seriously, and it can be hard for people to look past that. Not Ryan.

It’s the little things, too, the things that build up over the weeks and months as they get used to each other. Like how Ryan will forget to eat but always asks if Gavin’s had enough food. How he gives him books he thinks he’d like and even if he doesn’t drink to excess himself, administers hangover remedies whenever Gavin gets a little too bevved up.

So there they are, the two of them in the house together, and Gavin thinks he has not been this happy in a long time; he’s doing shit he loves with someone he likes a lot and life is good, life is _great_ , and the house is a bit big and lonely sometimes but he has Ryan for company and that’s all fine.

And then the others come along and things go from great to _excellent_.

—

Gavin doesn’t quite know how to feel about Jack.

He was scared of him at first, mostly by virtue of being startled by a _giant bloomin’ monster_ in the swamp in the middle of the night. Geoff claims he screamed so loudly and so girlishly that it would _literally_ wake the dead, which Gavin replied he had no problems with as long as he could film them rising from their graves.

So yeah. Jack was scary in the dark, but here under the clinical white lights of the lab he just looks rather more like an overgrown houseplant. Gavin still eyes him warily though, from where he’s perched on one of the benches in the corner, watching and filming on his GoPro.

Ryan’s scribbling on a clipboard and asking Jack really, really _boring_ questions like “So the swamp is your natural habitat?” and “What does your diet consist of?” and “Approximately how many of your kind would you say there are in this region?”

He pauses to write and Gavin pipes up, “So what's under there?”

Jack’s head swivels towards him, eyes poking out from beneath a sea of green, and Gavin gestures at him.

“You know. Under all the… kelp, or whatever. Is that actually part of your body or is it just like, shit that’s stuck all over you?”

“Gavin,” Ryan chides, but Jack just looks faintly bewildered, and Gavin continues on.

“Like seriously, is there fur under there? Or are you like, I don’t know. A naked mole rat.”

“ _Gavin_.”

“Or are you actually _made of seaweed_. Like a walking sushi roll!”

Ryan looks faintly horrified, the way he always does when an experiment is about to be compromised (because he has a sense of humour out on their nature walks but the lab is Sacred because he Actually Takes Shit Seriously, unlike Gavin, whose science is more of the ‘throw things together and see if something explodes’ variety).

But Jack just laughs.

A gentle, rumbling sort of ‘hoo hoo hoo’ laugh that makes Gavin break into sniggers as well. Jack laughs like he hasn’t laughed in a very long time and Gavin wonders suddenly, almost uncomfortably, how long he was alone out there in the swamp.

“Where’s your nob? Is it underneath? Are you like, a mammal or do your kind lay eggs? Although you still have to shag to produce eggs, right? Right? Birds shag right Ryan?”

By this point Ryan has covered his face with his hands and is just shaking his head, slowly, but Jack is still hoo-hoo-hooing and looking at Gavin like he’s the most amusing thing he’s seen in… well, ever, which he doesn’t know if he should take offense to or see as a compliment.

“Gavin,” Ryan groans, stern now. “Please leave so I can finish this up.”

“But I _found him_ ,” Gavin protests - but leaves anyway if only because he’s still covered in mud from the swamp and needs to go and shower.

“He probably won’t stay,” he says to Geoff later that night - Jack’s a stranger, after all, and actually seems to be doing alright for himself. When they first saw him Gavin’s a little embarrassed to admit he assumed he was just some giant lurking non-sentient creature, an animal more than anything else. Until Geoff started talking to him and he responded in an intelligent, remarkably cultured voice. Appearances deceive, it seems.

That being said, he’s obviously a smart guy so Gavin can’t fathom why he’d choose to stay here, with them, a ragtag little bunch of misfits who forget to do the grocery shopping most of the time and play far too much Mario Party.

But he stays.

The next day he’s still hanging around, except now he’s wearing some of Ryan’s old clothes. Geoff, Michael and Gavin watch him from the top of the stairs as he potters about the kitchen making himself at home.

“He’s moving the toaster,” Gavin says, a bit indignantly. “Who does he think he is. He’s moving the God damn toaster.”

“Give it a rest, Gav, right under the cabinet was never a good spot for it,” Geoff chides, eyes fixed on Jack in fascination.

“He’s actually staying, then,” Michael muses.

Geoff huffs. “It’ll be good to have more _mature adults_ around the place.”

“I’m a mature adult,” Gavin protests, puffing his chest out. “I’m twenty six and all!”

“ _I’m twen’y six an’ all,_ ” Michael mocks, in a voice that Gavin maintains is far too high-pitched an impression of him. “You’re a fucking _infant_ compared to the rest of us.”

“Mr five-hundred year old dead guy,” Gavin mutters back.

“You shut the fuck up; I’m not five-hundred years old.” There’s a dark edge to Michael’s voice the way he always gets when the topic of his past comes up; Gavin thinks he might have told Ryan something about it but not the rest of them. It seems to be a touchy subject with him.

“Alright, chill,” he says.

They’ve made enough noise by now that Jack has looked up and noticed them all staring, watching him. He rolls his eyes.

“You don’t have to hide up there. I don’t bite. Actually, I am a herbivore.”

They all stare at him for a moment, then Gavin burst out laughing, because for some reason ‘actually I am a herbivore’ is the funniest thing in the world to him at that moment. And Geoff rolls his eyes and heads down to talk to him; Michael goes to introduce himself as well, and Gavin hangs back a little. Because he likes Jack well enough, sure, but he’s still _new_ and he worries a bit about the impression he might have made.

Ryan comes up next to him as he’s lurking above the stairs to the lab. Glances at him, then at Jack talking to the others in the kitchen.

“Okay?” he asks. Doesn’t specify what, but Gavin knows what he means.

“Yeah,” he replies, even if it comes out a bit strained.

Ryan reaches across and squeezes his shoulder, and Gavin glances at him. He sees Ryan staring at them all sometimes like he isn’t quite sure how his life got to this point - (to be honest Gavin sometimes doesn’t know how his did either) - but he never looks _unhappy_. And Gavin remembers then how having Ryan was good, but having Geoff there too made it _better,_ and then Michael - Michael who is his boi now, who even if they argue a lot they make each other laugh more.

And Jack looks over at him then, him and Ryan, and smiles a bit - and Gavin remembers how he made him laugh last night and smiles tentatively back.

Jack turns out to be fantastic; he’s just so _delighted_ at every single interaction he has with the rest of them. He makes stupid jokes and is amused by every little thing.

He takes Ryan and Gavin out to the swamp one night and shows them a will o’the wisp. His big gentle hands holding each of them tightly lest they should fall into a trance and start to follow it deeper into the marsh. The ghostly light is enchanting as it dances and flickers off across the mire but Gavin doesn’t let his mind drift. Is grounded by the heavy weight of Jack’s hand on his shoulder and the sound of Ryan breathing softly next to him.

Jack doesn’t come out on their expeditions much; he prefers to hang out around the house. Cleaning the garden mostly, because it’s a jungle out the back and part of the patio is in danger of collapsing the next time there’s a strong wind. Geoff stays back with him, because it’s normally just Michael who comes out with them anyway, lurking around watching Jack with a beer in hand and occasionally helping out.

Gavin can see the two of them getting closer the more time they spend together, and even if he was the one Geoff talked to the most before that, he can’t quite bring himself to resent it because it feels, now, like Jack is Geoff’s the same way Michael is his.

Because that’s how it is - every passing day it feels like he and Michael are becoming closer and better friends.

Michael didn’t like him at first, he knows that, and he knows it’s because he asked too many questions about how and why and when he was brought back from the dead. In his defence Michael _was_ the one who volunteered to help Ryan out with his research, but it seems there are lines beyond which it is dangerous to pry, and Gavin didn’t realise at the time until it was too late.

He made up for it with offerings of alcohol and Xbox and a lot of stupid questions until Michael seemed to realise he was harmless. And then it was a simple matter of getting him to smile and laugh the once and from there they found their dynamic, it seems.

He likes having Michael around; they both like going for swimmies in the lake and playing Mario Kart while bevved up, and Michael always volunteers to let Gavin film him doing stupid shit since he can’t get injured. He’s like, ultra-Dan or something. Like Gavin’s little bit of home away from home (except this is home, here, now, he isn’t quite sure when that happened but now it has).

He brings up Dan one time, quite by accident, not having realised he’s never mentioned him before. They’re sitting out on the lake drinking - all of them hanging out together; it’s a summer day that was too hot earlier but has cooled a little as they hit late afternoon. A little way away Geoff and Jack are fishing; Ryan’s reading in the shade nearby and Gavin’s talking about some of the slow mo stuff he did back in England.

“Wait, you’re telling me you have _friends_?” Michael asks, and Gavin rolls his eyes, figuring he’s teasing.

“Yeah, of course I have _friends_ Michael. Though my current company may not say much about my taste in them.”

“I’m not being funny,” Michael replies, and Gavin stares at him, wondering if he should be offended. “No - I don’t - I’m not being fucking _mean_ , Gavin, it’s just. You never talk about them.”

“Don’t I?” He thinks about it, and realises, oh hey, he doesn’t! “I… I guess I don’t.”

“You don’t talk about England much at all, actually. Beyond your work.”

“I suppose not.”

He’s quiet for a moment, thinking, and after a second Michael stretches his leg out and kicks at his ankle.

“So you like it here more, then, huh?”

It’s teasing but Gavin bites his lip, because now he’s _thinking_ about it, of course, and it hits him suddenly that it’s true. Because England was fine but he never quite knew what he was doing, what his purpose was, except that he really liked filming cool stuff and by ‘cool stuff’ he meant magical stuff. And he’s doing exactly that now but somehow it feels different, here, with Ryan and all the rest. Like this is where he’s meant to be.

“I like it here with all you guys,” he replies, simply, and Michael’s face softens for a moment.

“We’re gonna be in all the science textbooks,” Gavin adds then, grinning widely, and Michael rolls his eyes.

“Ryan, maybe. Not you.”

“Oi! I make valuable contributions!”

“If falling out of trees and scaring away all the pixies is a ‘valuable contribution’, then sure.”

“That was _one time_.”

“One time that then led you to sprain your ankle and be unable to move quietly for _weeks_. We didn’t get _shit_ done.” Michael shakes his head, but there’s something fond in his smile that makes Gavin grin back, wide and happy. “I don’t know how Ryan puts up with you.”

“Ryan loves me,” Gavin replies, automatically, glancing across at the man. It’s funny seeing him out here chilling with the rest of them instead of down in the lab; Gavin considers them all _friends_ but Ryan’s always been a little oddly distant. Except with him; Gavin’s still the one he opens up the most around, which he finds oddly flattering even if it’s probably only because he’s known him the longest.

Lately he’s been quieter though, and Gavin can’t quite figure out why. Sometimes he’ll go out on expeditions on his own and not even ask Gav if he wants to come along, or he’ll lock the lab door and Gavin’s too awkward and scared of confrontation to bring it up. 

He lets his eyes scan down the side of Ryan’s face, his intent gaze where he’s staring at his book. Michael follows his gaze and snorts a little.

“He must,” he says, “Since he paid all that money to stop you getting deported.”

“Shut up, Michael, I wouldn’t have been _deported_.”

It’s true, though. When he finally admitted to Ryan just why he’d been wandering around in the woods near his house with an expensive-as-fuck camera the man had been appalled, and more than a little afraid that the police were going to come knocking on their door any minute. It had taken a lot of convincing but he’d managed to persuade Gavin that he needed to go back, admit what he’d done, and then have Ryan employ him specifically. Luckily Ryan had a couple of contacts back in Oxford - professors who Gavin had worked with before - and together they had enough sway to convince Gavin’s bosses to keep him on and then hire him out to Ryan. It had cost a fair amount though - some of it under the table - and Gavin had spent a good few days terrified that Ryan would change his mind or realise that he’d made a mistake.

Now he frowns a little, wondering why Ryan would pull away from him lately. Maybe it’s because he’s been acting up more, fooling around more - but that’s because of Michael joining them on outings. They tend to instigate each other. Maybe that’s why Ryan’s annoyed at him.

“Earth to Gavvers.” Michael reaches over and presses the frosty surface of a beer bottle to Gavin’s stomach; he screeches at the cold, squirming away, and that leads them into a wrestling match that Michael wins with ease. Gavin’s howling as Michael manages to pin him down - “Stop, I’ve got dirt in my mouth - Michael no, it’s all mingin’ I need to spit it out-” - the noise has the others looking over at them; he hears Geoff and Jack start to laugh but when Michael squashes his face into the ground, cheek flat against the dusty lakeside, all he can see is Ryan looking up from his book and frowning a little.

That night the lab door is locked again and Gavin drinks perhaps a few too many beers as he mulls over several cunning plans to find out what’s up with Ryan, ranging from simply knocking on the door and asking (terrible, terrible, he’d chicken out right away) to covering himself in swamp mire to disguise himself as Jack and then sneakily interrogating him under the mantle of concerned bystander (that could work; he’s confident in his ability to do a good Jack impression. He practices a lot, mostly while drunk.)

As it is, he gets too tipsy to even consider putting one of his plans into action, and ends up just swaying his way up into Michael’s room with two more beers in hand before appropriating his bed.

Michael takes it in stride; he shoves Gavin over on the bed and starts drinking too, and listens to him complaining all about how he ‘hasn't bloody done nothing wrong’, nodding and humming at the appropriate times before letting him fall into silence.

By this point Gavin is buzzing. As they sit there Ryan fades from his thoughts and he starts looking at Michael. Michael, Michael, lovely Michael who was so nice to him tonight. Michael who he admires for being so brave and blunt; nothing phases him. He deals with his problems right away, no faffing about, not like Gavin.

He loses filters when he’s bevved and he can’t quite stop himself from staring adoringly at him.

“What?” Michael asks, voice a little slurred himself as he rolls over. It’s a bit too warm with both of them on the bed but Michael’s always freezing to the touch anyway. Something about being dead, probably.

“Nothing,” Gavin replies. “Just. You’re top, Michael.”

“Thanks bud, you’re not bad yourself.”

Gavin smiles at him and Michael smiles back and then they both start drunkenly tittering, and Gavin’s worry about Ryan fades away a little in the face of it. It used to be Geoff he’d go hang with when he wanted some company at night but Geoff’s out with Jack now, wandering out in the forest in the dark again, just the two of them the way they do sometimes. He has to share Geoff with Jack now, and Ryan seems to want to be alone, but Michael - Michael is his, and he’s very happy about it.

Then, of course, Ray comes along. And suddenly Michael isn’t just his anymore.

—

—

—

Ryan looks wrecked.

He always looks kind of scruffy, in a sort of absent-minded-scientist way. But now, as he pushes Gavin back away from him and he gets a good look at his face, he realises this is different. He looks like he hasn’t slept or showered in days. There are dark bags under his red-rimmed eyes and something almost manic to his gaze. He’s looking at Gavin like he can’t quite believe he’s real.

“Are you okay?” Gavin asks. His voice is small and weak. He still can’t move.

“I’m fine,” Ryan replies, his voice tight. He can’t seem to stop smiling, almost hysterically. “Are you in pain?”

“No.” Still that odd numbness. “What… what happened, Ry, I don’t… understand?”

An odd look flickers across Ryan’s face. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.” He searches for it but finds a black hole; he can’t even remember the last thing he was doing. Or what day it is. Just a blur of the usual things; eating breakfast and going out in the forest. Filming. Playing Xbox. “Nothing in particular? Just the normal? Why am I…” 

His left arm feels weird and he looks down at it only to frown. There’s an odd pallor to it, white like it hasn’t seen the sun in a good while, and his hand is… oddly bigger than he remembers it being. In fact it doesn’t look very much like his arm at all, and he-

And he-

_That’s not my arm_.

That’s not his arm and there are stitches running up the inside of it - little, almost invisible white stitches but stitches nonetheless and-

And his heart feels too warm and is beating too hard-

And he looks around and realises he was _hooked up_ to those machines and-

“Ryan, what’s going on?” he cries, suddenly _terrified_. Feels like he should be scared even if he can’t remember why. “I don’t - what’s happening, why am I-”

“Shh, Gav, it’s okay, it’s okay. Don’t freak out.” Ryan’s arms are around him again, pulling him close. Holding him tight but almost gently like he’s worried he’ll fall apart if he presses too hard.

Gavin tries to clench his fists, curl his fingers and after a few moments succeeds. Slowly feels movement seep back into his limbs and brings his arms up to hug Ryan back, clinging to him - doesn’t know what’s going on but thinks, suddenly, that it’s okay because Ryan always knows. Ryan’s always on top of things, he’s the smartest person Gavin knows - if Ryan’s in control of all this it’s got to be okay, right?”

“ _Ryan_!”

There’s a tremendous bang from the entrance and both of them jump, whirling around in time to see the lab door burst open in an explosion of blue flame. Gavin flinches back but it’s the others who bust through. The frantic alarm on their faces has him scared again. Confused as to why everyone is acting so strangely.

That confusion only heightens when the next minute Ryan steps in front of him, arms out as though to defend him - but from his _friends_?

Geoff starts forward only to freeze, eyes falling on Gavin - it seems like the moment all of them see him they stop in their tracks.

Cold nervousness grips him.

_What is going on?_

“Ryan.” Geoff’s voice is cold, careful - flat in a way Gavin doesn’t like. There is not a trace of humour in his tone and suddenly, Gavin is reminded that he is a demon, a _danger_ \- he has never been afraid of Geoff before but now, under his stern gaze - now something like fear crawls deep in his belly.

“Ryan,” Geoff repeats. Steps closer, and Ryan shifts in front of Gavin again, but Geoff just points at him with a single trembling finger. “What the _fuck_ is that?”

“It’s Gavin,” Ryan replies, calmly.

“You didn’t.” Dawning horror now - he sees Michael and Ray exchange startled glances - sees the fear on all their faces - _what’s happening?_

“Guys,” he says, confused. But Michael flinches when he speaks and suddenly he can’t bring himself to continue.

“Ryan, no - _no_.” And there’s panic rising in Geoff’s voice now. “You didn’t - you fucking _didn’t_ \- please tell me I’m imagining this right now.”

“Geoff, it's okay.” Ryan’s voice strained, pleading. “It’s okay - I brought him back - I fixed it…”

“You didn’t fix a _fucking_ thing!” Michael explodes - so much pain in his voice that Gavin can’t bear it. He’s terrified now because they’re all _looking_ at him like he’s-

Like he’s-

He doesn’t know but not like he’s _himself_ and _this isn’t my arm_ and he feels weird and-

“Ryan, Ry, what’s going on?” he cries, reaching out and gripping the back of the other man’s lab coat, “What’s happening, I don’t-”

“Shh, it’s fine, Gav,” Ryan tries to assure him - turns towards him but he’s still not _answering_ and Gavin pushes him away. Slides off the bench only to fall as his legs give out under him. Ryan grabs him around the waist, lowering him to sit on the floor - the others start forward in alarm.

“Geoff, what’s going on?” Gavin pleads, reaching out for him - an odd flash of pain crosses Geoff’s face.

“It’s fine,” Ryan repeats, a childlike petulance in his tone - “I brought him _back_.”

“Back from _where_?” Gavin shouts - and now - now Geoff’s face twists. He moves forward and crouches in front of Gavin. Stares into his eyes for a long, long moment, searching for something, Gavin doesn’t know what. He feels like he’s being tested somehow.

Finally Geoff rocks back on his heels with a sigh. Pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Is it him?” Michael asks, voice very tense.

“Of course it’s me,” Gavin says, voice shaking. “What… what’re you on about?”

“It’s him,” Geoff says, and does not sound happy about it.

There’s an explosion of curses and exhales from the others - half panicked and half upset and suddenly Gavin doesn’t feel so safe anymore. He scrambles back towards Ryan, who reaches down and grips his shoulder. Even that does not reassure.

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Ryan,” Geoff says, hands over his face.

“This should not be a bad thing,” Ryan says, stonily. “He’s _back_ -”

“He’s a fucking _zombie_ ,” Michael yells, and Gavin’s world drops out from under him.

“ _What_?” It should come out a shrill cry but it _doesn’t_ , he just sort of - _gasps_ it, and Ryan squeezes his shoulder but-

But it’s not _his_ shoulder, it’s not his _arm_ -

He’s covered in stitches-

He feels _numb_ -

“Shut up, you’re scaring him,” Ryan starts. “Gav-”

“He should be fucking scared,” Michael snaps - “He should be fucking _dead_!”

Gavin is panicking.

He realises it in an oddly detached manner. That he is shaking and gasping and can’t focus on any one thing, only that he’s _scared_ and _doesn’t understand_ and-

_Dead?_

Ryan crouches in front of him again, hands firm on his shoulders - “Gav - calm down - look at me - it’s okay, it’s okay-”

It’s not okay.

The others are hanging back behind and he sees Ray start forward as though to touch him, but Michael grabs his arm and pulls him back. Like he doesn’t want him near Gavin. And there is a terrible hardness to his boi’s face that makes Gavin feel sick because that isn’t Michael - Michael would never stand to see him so upset - this isn’t Michael-

(Or maybe _this isn’t him_ -)

“What does he mean?” he asks, voice shaking. Reaches up to grip the lapels of Ryan’s lab coat. “What does he mean _dead_?”

Ryan pauses. Then takes a deep breath and says, “Okay,” and his voice drops into that calm, collected tone he uses when he’s dictating research for the camera or explaining something scientific - the normality of that soothes Gavin, makes all this seem comprehensible.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“ _No!_ I told you, _no_ \- I don’t remember a bloody thing-”

“Okay. Calm down. Nearly a week ago you… you died.” His voice shakes but doesn’t crack and Gavin’s breath hitches, but _okay_ and Ryan is calm so he can be calm too - “You died; something killed you out in the forest. But now you’re back. I brought you back.”

It’s… 

It’s horrifying, but if anything knowing exactly what’s going on has _calmed_ him, at least for now, at least at this moment - it doesn’t seem real, or maybe it’s just not hitting him yet.

“Like Michael,” he says, after a moment, and Ryan pauses.

“Not… quite like Michael. I can show you the process later, but for now, suffice to say an enchanted heart was involved and you won’t… heal. Not like Michael does.” He turns and glares at the man in question. “And for the record, he’s not a _zombie_. He should be perfectly in control of himself. I believe the term is ‘undead’.”

_Undead_. It still doesn’t seem real.

“…okay,” Gavin says, only Geoff sighs again.

“You shouldn’t have done this,” he says, sounding very, very tired - but Ryan is angry now. Angry in a way Gavin has never seen him before - he’s been annoyed before and got mad once when Gavin ruined an experiment in the lab - but not like this. A harsh coldness descends over his features that is frankly terrifying and he steps forward, facing up to Geoff, heedless of the flames that are dancing over the demon’s skin.

“Why the _fuck_ not,” he hisses - “He’s back. He was dead and now he’s not and he’s still _him_ , it’s better than nothing. I refuse to apologise for saving him.”

“ _Saving_ him,” Michael scoffs, and Gavin looks over at him, hurt - but it fades into worry because that look is back that Michael gets sometimes. Too old and too haunted and too _tired_.

_Like he’s been alive too long_ , Jack said once, when Gavin brought it up.

“You didn’t save him, Ryan,” Michael spits.

Geoff nods, cutting in: “You can’t just play God whenever you fucking want to.”

Ryan’s got his arms folded. “ _Why_ ,” he repeats.

“It seems good now but this is a fucking _curse_ , okay?” Michael says, stiffly.

Jack breaks in then, voice calm but tight.

“People hunt things like him,” he says.

“People hunt things like all of you,” Ryan shouts back.

There’s a terrible frozen silence.

Gavin can’t speak, paralysed under their stares. What’s confusing him now - what’s _scaring_ him now - is that they all, what, hate him? That they all seem to want him dead again, which _hurts_.

The worst is the suddenness of it. He can’t remember what happened - feels like he’s been pulled from a sleep so deep that he can’t recall what day it is - but still. It’s like one second ago everything was normal, they were all friends, but now everything is different and Michael is looking at him like he wishes he didn’t exist.

Ryan sighs heavily. Rubs his hands over his face and suddenly just looks _tired_.

“Look, can we… can we talk about this later,” he says. “We’re all tired, we’re all upset, I need to… to run some tests. Can we just. Talk about this later?”

Geoff doesn’t reply. He looks at Gavin and against that odd mix of emotions - pain and anger and sadness and _fear -_ not of him but _for_ him - crosses his face. And then he turns on his heel and strides out. Jack glances between them, seeming torn, but he leaves too.

Michael looks like he wants to argue more, but when his eyes fall on Gavin something shifts in them and he just looks _upset_ ; his gaze slides away and he clenches his fists.

“Welcome to the freak show, Gavin,” he says, voice tight. And leaves too. Ray looks like he wants to stay but Michael grabs his wrist and drags him out with him.

Silence.

Gavin can hear his heart pounding, except he’s not really sure it’s _his_ heart anymore. He doesn't know what to feel. Just closes his eyes and tries to… to process it, or something. It’s hard to wrap his head around.

_It’s a fucking curse_. The raw pain in Michael’s voice.

He doesn’t remember what it felt like to be dead. All he knows is _now_ , and that the others hate to look at him.

Ryan sighs again and Gavin looks over at him. He’s turned to bend over one of the lab benches, writing - arm moving methodically, almost of its own volition. Like that’s all he can do now. Record the data.

Gavin wonders if this is all some horrible nightmare.

He gets up off the floor. Stumbles but catches himself and crosses over to him. Touches his elbow, lightly.

“Ryan,” he whispers.

Ryan stops writing, head hunched down over the papers. He’s shaking.

“I won’t apologise for saving you,” he repeats. It sounds like he’s trying to convince somebody. “I won’t…”

“It’s okay.” Gavin isn’t sure when he went from the comforted to the comforter, but he moves to grab Ryan’s arm. Hesitates before pulling him into a hug - because he knows, he remembers, that the other doesn’t do hugs - but Ryan grips him tightly again, his head ducks down to bury his face in Gavin’s hair, arms locked around him like he still thinks he might fade away.

It hits Gavin then that he was _dead_ , that it’s been a week without him, that-

That-

That they _lost_ him, that they probably _grieved-_

(And something in Ryan’s reaction - that he grieved _hard_ , that this loss shattered something in the walls he always keeps up-)

“It’ll be okay,” Ryan murmurs. Gavin isn’t sure which of them he’s trying to reassure. “It’ll all be fine now.”

“They wish I was still dead.” That comes out small and scared, too many old issues rising up - but Ryan shakes his head. Pulls away and reaches out to cup Gavin’s cheek in a gesture that’s oddly, uncharacteristically intimate.

“No they don’t,” he says, firmly. “They’ll come around.”

“Okay,” Gavin whispers, and can only hope it’s true.

—

Except nothing is fine.

It still doesn’t hit him that he _died_ because he can’t remember it - but what he is now, an ‘undead’ or whatever Ryan calls it - that’s another matter entirely.

Ryan’s explained the whole process to him, done some tests to ensure everything’s working fine, but it isn’t until Gavin goes upstairs to sleep that he goes into the bathroom and actually sees himself properly in the mirror.

He stops dead.

It’s him - there’s no denying that - yet… _not_ him. He doesn’t look alive-

(He doesn’t look _human_ -)

There’s an unnatural greyish pallor to his skin, like his whole being has been washed out. Like his reflection’s caught in a high-flash photograph. He can see veins under his skin, stark and blue. His eyes are all weird; they’re too bright. Still blue but now an unnatural, glowing sort of blue. He knows that’s the enchanted heart.

But worst is the stitches.

There’s a whole row of them running across his face where Ryan stitched the flesh of his cheek together, and he can tell - he can tell that that’s not his ear. It’s a different shape and he can see where it’s been sewn on.

That’s not his arm - more stitches, running down his neck too - those are thicker, where, presumably, something ripped his throat out and-

_Oh God don’t think about it-_

He squeezes his eyes shut. Fights not to hyperventilate.

_Okay. Okay._

He has to do this, has to see the extent of the damage. Slowly he pulls his shirt off over his head. Stands half-naked in front of the mirror, trying to work up the courage to open his eyes.

_It can’t be that bad._

He opens his eyes.

It’s bad.

The stitches here are thick and apparent. A stark line down the middle of his chest like an autopsy scar, where Ryan pulled out his heart and stuck a new one in.

Rows and rows of them across his ribs, sides, stomach, thick thread holding dead flesh together. Dark bruises that will never heal mottled around the wounds. More lines trailing down his hips towards his legs.

He looks like a doll that’s been chewed up by a dog and then repaired. Visibly torn up, just held together now by needles and thread.

_Oh God,_ he realises suddenly. _I’m a walking corpse. I’m literally a walking corpse_.

And then - feeling sick - _these are some other dead guy’s parts stuck on me_.

And Ryan explained this to him but he’d sounded so clinical that Gavin had just been like, yeah, okay, right, whatever.

But seeing it now, in person, on his _body_ \- he visualises the process suddenly and his stomach lurches. Stumbles over to the toilet and throws up nothing but thick black goop that smells of rotting flesh.

_Oh God, oh God, oh God_ , he thinks, retching again and again until his throat hurts and he’s actually worried he’ll start throwing guts up next, because anything’s possible at this point. He stands, breathing heavily, and then flushes the toilet and watches black sludge swirl down the drain and suddenly, suddenly he isn’t quite as okay with this back-from-the-dead thing as he was before.

A knock at the door makes him jump nearly out of his skin.

“Gav?” It’s Jack’s voice, sounding worried. “You okay in there?”

“Y-yeah.” The lie comes automatically; he’s already scrambling to put on his shirt. A sudden shame overcoming him. He doesn’t want Jack to see him like this. _Disgusting_.

“Can I come in?” Jack’s voice is gentle, concerned. Everything he wasn’t before when Gavin needed it most.

“Umm, no. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Okay.”

It falls silent outside and Gavin finishes getting dressed. Pauses before he reaches the door and looks at himself in the mirror again. His gut twists and he looks away immediately.

It doesn’t feel permanent.

He feels like after he sleeps he’ll wake up and find this was all a terrible dream. Like every time he looks back at his reflection he expects it to be normal again.

Taking a deep breath, he heads out.

Jack is waiting outside his bedroom door. Gavin can’t meet his eyes, suddenly afraid of him - of what he might see in the other’s gaze. Hates it because he’s never felt anything but safe in this house, around these people, his _friends_.

Jack must see how tense he is. He looks stricken, suddenly - then in a single abrupt motion reaches out and yanks him into a tight hug. Gavin lets out a grunt of surprise before hugging him back, feeling a sudden rush of relief that at least one person other than Ryan is, you know. Acting as he’d expect if they got their friend back from the dead.

Even if Gavin tends to talk to Geoff and Michael more, Jack has always been the most comforting of them. The caretaker, the one who patches up their scrapes and makes sure they’re all getting a balanced diet. And it shows now; despite everything that’s happened today, being held by him Gavin feels a little of the fear and tension leach away.

Jack’s face, buried against his shoulder, feels oddly damp and it takes Gavin a minute to realise he’s _crying_. He feels awkward suddenly, reaching up to rub the other’s back.

“Jack,” he says, softly.

“Sorry, sorry,” Jack replies. Pulls back with a sheepish sort of grin. “Just… you’re back.”

“Thought you didn’t want me back,” Gavin murmurs, and Jack shakes his head frantically.

“Oh, Gavin, no. It’s not like that at all. You were _dead_ , we - we were devastated, all of us. Of course we’re glad you’re back.”

“Then why…”

Jack shakes his head a bit. Ushers Gavin into his room and sits him down on the bed. Gavin can’t help but notice all the little things; like how walking feels different now that one of his legs isn’t his - _don’t think about that_ \- how when Jack sits next to him and puts his arm around him he can’t feel it as much as he used to. Like his not-arm is less sensitive to touch.

“Michael and Geoff,” Jack says, slowly, “Both of them took it really hard when you… died. And Ryan brought up bringing you back to them, but they… they wouldn’t help him because there’s rules to magic.”

“Rules,” Gavin repeats - Ryan tends towards studying the biology of magical creatures rather than the way spells and curses work. 

“You can’t bring back the dead,” Jack replies, “Or at least not as they were originally. They’re just worried that this might end up being bad for you.”

“Bad?” Gavin asks.

Jack nods, slowly. “I don’t… I don’t know much about it. I’m just a swamp creature,” he adds, with a little self-deprecating huff. “But Gavin… you’re not _human_ any more, and you’re not… there’s no going back from this. It’s not like Ryan turned back time and fixed everything. There’s gonna be consequences.”

Gavin swallows.

He’s not stupid. He feels weird and different, and he knows it hasn’t even fully sunk in yet.

He’s scared.

Jack squeezes his arm tighter around his shoulders.

“Hey,” he says gently, “It’s okay. We’ll work through this together, alright? And Michael and Geoff shouldn’t have freaked out like that back there. Not in front of you after you just woke up. Do they have a right to be mad at Ryan, sure, he went behind all of our backs on this. But they shouldn’t have scared you like that.”

Gavin nods a bit. All he really wants to do now, though, is sleep, or just… think through this, try to get used to it. He gets up and heads for the door, but Jack grabs his hand. Tugs him back gently.

“I missed you,” he says softly, something very sincere in it.

It hits Gavin again - _I was actually dead -_ suddenly he wants to cry, which is weird because he hasn’t cried in the entirety of his adult life. Something about that disturbs him, like he can’t trust that his emotions are his own anymore - the enchanted heart still beating too warm in his chest - forcing a smile for Jack, he turns and heads off back to his own room.

—

He can’t sleep.

As the shock wears off he starts thinking about the fact that he’s _dead_ and he can’t remember what happened and there’s another person’s bits on him. He grows suddenly paranoid that if he sleeps he might not wake up.

After two hours tossing and turning he gets up. It’s nearly morning by now; they’d been up nearly the whole night, but it’s still dark with winter outside. The house is very cold and he thinks he’s feeling it more than usual but can’t be sure if he’s just imagining it.

He heads out of his room and down towards the stairs only to pause when he sees a light on in the kitchen and Michael and Geoff standing in there. They’ve got drinks in hand and both of them look terrible, wrung out like they’ve been up all night. Gavin pauses, suddenly nervous.

“The fuck are we going to do?” he hears Michael say.

Geoff takes another swig of liquor and looks at the bottle like he wishes he was able to get drunk.

“I don’t know, Michael.”

“Are we just going to leave this?”

Geoff sighs. “What else can we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s done is done, like it or not.”

“He’s not…” Michael trails off. There’s a funny sort of look on his face, and Geoff stiffens. Puts the bottle down and turns to him, suddenly stern.

“What, Michael?”

“He’s not immortal like I am,” Michael says, so quietly Gavin can barely hear it from where he’s standing in the stairwell. “He won’t heal. Get him in the brain like a zombie and he’ll die-”

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Michael,” Geoff hisses, raw anger in his tone. He flares with blue fire but Michael doesn’t flinch, even when the ends of his hair begin to smoulder a little.

“You think I’m being cruel.” Michael’s voice is thick like he’s going to start crying but he stands his ground. “But trust me, Geoff, we’d be doing him a favour in the long run. He is not just going to be okay now that Ryan’s brought him back. There’s… you… the price of this is you get to a point where you wish you were dead anyway. I’ve _lived_ this, okay, it gets bad.”

“Is it bad _now_?” Geoff demands, and Michael falls silent. “Here, with us? I’m not happy about this but for God’s sake, Ryan’s right about one thing, we do have him _back_. Maybe it’ll be hard but we have to try and make the best of it now it’s happened.”

Michael turns away. Drains the glass he’s holding and then puts his face in his hands.

“I didn’t mean I want to kill him,” he says. “I _didn’t_. I couldn’t deal with losing him twice. It’s just… God, Geoff, this is fucked up. This is _Gavin_ , he’s not meant to… he’s not meant to be like this. He wasn’t meant to be _dead_. I’m fucking _scared_ for him, okay, it’s going… it’s going to get rough.”

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” Geoff says, but moves forward then, arms reaching for Michael to comfort him.

Gavin slowly goes back upstairs. He feels sick, both from what he heard and with the fear that is only rising with every passing hour. Because the others’ reaction has him worried, a trepidation like something very, very bad is going to happen.

He goes up to the roof and sits there in the freezing air watching the sky slowly turn white with dawn and the sun creep up over the distant hills. It’s a brisk, chilly morning and any other day he would have felt reinvigorated. Now there’s just a dead sort of exhaustion. He looks down at his hands, mismatched and horribly pale. The stitches running up one arm.

Feels sick.

—

Something very, very bad happens, but not all at once. It is a creeping badness that seeps into his bones over time.

He’s not coping.

Every time he looks down at himself or so much as thinks about the fact that he’s a walking cadaver he feels nauseous. A deep seated sort of self loathing rising up because no matter how much magic is involved that is _gross_. Dead bodies are gross and-

And-

And he thinks about Dan, sometimes. How he’s never going to see him again because there’s no fucking way he wants Dan to see him like this.

There are zombies back in England. Nothing out of control, just the occasional one found wandering about in the countryside. If there’s ever too many they send the military out to take care of them.

He knows Dan’s killed them before.

And he’s not a zombie, sure, but he’s bloody well close enough at this point, isn’t he? He doesn’t want to have to deal with the look on Dan’s face when he sees him because he knows it will change things irrevocably.

It’s bad with the others too. They don’t look at him the same and he hates it. He hates it when they look at him but he also hates it when they _don’t_ because either way he can _tell_ they’re thinking that he’s not the same, he’s not the same, _he’s not the same_.

—

Geoff and Michael are still angry with Ryan.

They never talk to him anymore and if they do it’s clipped and harsh and Gavin can tell it’s upsetting Ryan, as much as he tries to hide it. He spends most of his time down in the lab and doesn’t eat with them anymore.

Jack tries to fix it but the others always shut him down when he does and Gavin’s too scared to try and intervene himself.

So an odd tension takes over the house and no one seems happy anymore.

(And Gavin always thought if anyone ever came back from the dead it would be a miracle. People would be happy. Celebrate or something.

They don’t celebrate him coming back.)

Nothing is the same. Geoff keeps vanishing for hours on end, sometimes days, and whenever he’s around Gavin he gives him these _looks_. Pitying like he’s thinking _you poor stupid boy you don’t understand what’s been done to you_.

Gavin understands perfectly what’s been done to him. He doesn’t like it but it would help if the others weren’t acting like _they_ didn’t like it as well. 

Especially Michael.

Michael who will barely look at him, who looks upset every day and locks himself in his room and won’t even speak to Ray. Gavin misses him and feels like he woke up one day and just lost his best friend.

Like when he died everyone else died with him and now they’re all back but they’re not the same.

Jack and Ray put in an effort to act normally but Gavin finds himself unable to rise to it; he feels listless somehow like his previous energy, his zest is gone. He’s not even interested in filming things any more. Sometimes he worries, still, that his personality is no longer his own. Questions whether he really is himself. Whether it’s not just his body that’s been tampered with but his mind as well. It makes him skittish and paranoid and he just can’t _deal_ -

—

Ryan is different to the others.

He doesn’t look at Gavin like he’s on a whole different level of freak to the rest of them. He looks at him like it’s a miracle he’s back and he’s the only one; even Jack and Ray have some level of horror under their relief.

Not Ryan. Ryan puts up a facade of normality whenever they’re down in the lab. Continues his work and explains things to Gavin even when it’s obvious he’s not listening. Tries to joke around even if Gavin never feels like laughing nowadays.

Something about that stirs something in him. 

His feelings for Ryan are odd now; sometimes he feels a strange tug like they used to be stronger. The memory of a fire that’s fizzled down to embers now. He still likes him a good deal but it’s like there’s a block in his memory where something happened and he can’t remember what.

But then again he can’t seem to rouse himself to feel any strong emotion right now. Love, platonic or otherwise. Happiness. Even anger. Just nothing except an odd dull emptiness and sometimes fear. Hatred but only towards himself.

But two weeks pass going on three and the house feels like they’re all still in mourning for something, and no one’s smiled properly the entire time, and everyone seems to be hiding from each other.

Gavin ventures down to the kitchen for food - he’s been experimenting and eating too much seems to make him throw up more black gunk, but he still feels hunger, a painful deep gnaw low in his gut. Knows he needs to get at least something in him or he doesn’t know what will happen. If it’s possible for him to starve to death in this state. So he’s trying to take it slowly when he hears yelling, _screaming_ , coming from the living room.

He freezes, afraid again. He’s afraid a lot lately and isn’t sure if it’s really him or if this wrong heart is slowly taking control of his body. If maybe he’s never really been himself since he came back.

He doesn’t go to investigate. He goes outside and puts his hands over his ears until the shouting fades to a dull background fuzz and he can’t make out the words. Eventually he hears a door slam and turns to see Ryan coming out of the house. They make awkward eye contact and Ryan walks over to him.

“What are you doing out here?” he asks.

Gavin just shrugs. He can see that Ryan is tense; there are stressed lines around his eyes. He’s frowning. 

Ryan sighs. He rubs his hands over his face and Gavin wants to touch him. He used to give Ryan back massages sometimes, he remembers, when his shoulders got too stiff from hunching over things in the lab all day. They weren’t very good but Ryan never complained. He twitches his fingers by his side and wonders if maybe the back-rub powers of whoever’s arm this is will have, like, transferred over to him. That would be one plus in a sea of negatives.

“Come on,” Ryan says suddenly. He grabs Gavin’s wrist and leads him around the side of the house to the patio. Sits on the swing chair that Jack repaired and tugs Gavin to sit next to him.

They’re silent for a moment. Gavin isn’t quite sure what’s going on here but after a minute he finds that he starts to relax. It’s nice being out of the house - he’s stayed indoors most of the last few days - and here, in the dark, with none of the others around, he feels less self conscious.

Ryan lets out a soft sigh next to him. His breath mists in the air before them. It’s cold out here.

“What were you fighting about?” Gavin asks quietly.

To his surprise Ryan chuckles softly, though there’s no humour in it.

“Oh God,” he says, “Too many things to list.”

“Michael?”

“Michael and Geoff,” Ryan says, and shakes his head a bit. “Things coming to a head. You know they’ve been pissed at me.”

“For bringing me back.”

“Yeah.”

Gavin bites his lip. He’s starting to get it now, maybe. Why the two of them are so angry about it. Because maybe if he hadn’t come back, things would be better. The others would be sad but they wouldn’t be _fighting_ with each other and eventually, they’d get back to normal. Eventually they’d get over him.

But since he returned everything’s just been awful. He’s not happy and no one else is happy and this, this must be what Michael and Geoff were scared of. That Gavin wouldn’t be able to cope with what he is now.

And he’s not coping.

“Gavin?” Ryan asks, and he snaps back to attention. Realises the other has been trying to get his attention for some time.

“Sorry, what?"

“You cold?” Ryan asks, frowning a little. “You’re shivering.”

Gavin nods but pushes Ryan’s hands away when he tries to move to take off his jacket.

“You’ll be cold,” he says, and Ryan shrugs. But stops what he’s doing and puts his arm around Gavin instead.

Something feels weird about that, because that sort of contact isn’t something they did even _before_. And there’s something weird in Ryan’s face now; he keeps opening and shutting his mouth like he wants to say something. Gavin waits patiently and eventually Ryan speaks up, hesitantly.

“Gav… do you remember why you left the house that day?”

“No. I don’t remember anything.” That’s been bothering him as much as anything else.

“Do you remember the day you left? What we were doing?”

“No,” Gavin says again. “Like, that whole week is a blur. No one’s told me, either,” he adds, a touch grumpily. “That might help, you know. Might jog something.”

Ryan hesitates.

“The day before,” he says, “It was snowing. We had a snowball fight.”

“That sounds vaguely familiar,” Gavin replies, after thinking hard for a moment. “I know it happened but I can’t remember any of the details. Who won?”

“Geoff, of course,” Ryan says, but sounds very strained. “You don’t remember anything else?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No! Why? Did something happen?” He turns to Ryan and finds he’s biting his lip now. He looks more upset than he has even these last few weeks and again something off tugs in Gavin’s chest. Like there’s something he should remember but can’t. Some piece of the puzzle.

“No,” Ryan says, and his voice is thick. “Nothing happened.”

He gets up then and walks off before Gavin can even react, leaving him cold on the bench, staring after him more lost than ever.

—

That night he dreams for the first time since it happened.

He dreams of before, and being human again, and being in love with Ryan. It’s worse than any nightmare because when he wakes up he remembers vivid flashes of things. Like the sunlight on his skin and laughing with the others and how when he looked at Ryan he used to get a swell of warmth in his chest. A too-fervent longing that he hasn’t felt since he returned. That he didn’t even really remember until now.

The more he thinks about it the more he can almost recreate the feeling. His heart feels too warm again, almost burning hot in his chest as he thinks of Ryan, Ryan-

Ryan who won’t want him _now_ , surely, if he even did before.

His heart sinks and he feels cold all over. And _sick_ to his stomach, hyper aware of the stitches in his face. Of the arm and leg and ear that aren’t his.

The happiness of the dream seems to almost mock him now. He curls up in his bed and thinks of how the house is too quiet now. 

For the first time he suddenly wonders if maybe he should be angry with Ryan as well. Angry for turning him into - into _this_. Angry because technically everything that Gavin is suffering now is _his_ fault.

But he’s not. Angry, that is. Can’t quite bring himself to be.

And that, of course, all leads to the next question. _Do I wish I’d never come back?_

That one is not so easy to answer, and that scares him more than anything else.

—

—

—

Michael introduces Ray to Gavin like this: he brings this stranger into the kitchen, sits him down at the table, says “Ray, that’s Gavin. Gavin, Ray. I need to take a piss; entertain each other.”

And then walks out.

Gavin’s standing there about to stick a fork in the toaster to get his bread out and he stares at Ray for a long moment. Ray stares back, both looking equally befuddled.

“Uh, hi,” Gavin says, and goes for the toast again, only for Ray to jump forward and reach out then stop just before touching him.

There’s another awkward moment where they’re both standing there and Ray’s got his hand out but isn’t quite making contact.

“I… don’t think you should do that,” Ray says then, glancing at the toaster.

Gavin looks down at it and shrugs. “Why not?”

“Because that’s… like, one of the first safety things they teach you in kindergarten? You’re about to fucking electrocute yourself, that’s why.”

“Oh,” Gavin says. “Nah. It’s unplugged. It’s fine when it’s unplugged.”

Ray raises his hands and steps back. “Your funeral, man. You’re gonna damage it though and then it’ll blow up in the future and burn the house down.”

Gavin slowly lowers the fork.

“Well you’re a grim sort of fellow, aren’t you,” he says, and then burns his fingers three times trying to get his toast out with his bare hands. By the time he’s sitting at the table eating Ray has begun to avoid making eye contact with him and he’s slowly dying inside from making such a bad first impression.

Gavin clears his throat when the silence reaches a level of awkwardness where it’s just _too_ awkward to let it keep going.

“So how long have you known Michael then?”

“About three hours.”

“Oh.” He’d thought Michael had produced a friend or something. Then again, he realises now that Michael doesn’t actually talk about having friends. “So you’re just some random off the street he’s brought in?”

“Random from out in the forest, yeah.”

“Um… what are you?” For all intents and purposes Ray looks human but there’s something a little off about him. The flash of sharp canine teeth in his mouth when he talks. A loping sort of stride to his movements.

Ray’s mouth twists a bit.

“Werewolf.” He says it quickly, like he’s ashamed of it, and Gavin just nods.

“Cool! I met one of those back in England once. Top bloke.”

He expects Ray to comment on that, or something, but he just nods and the silence comes back and Gavin gives up at that point and focuses on just shoving as much bread in his mouth as possible so he doesn’t have to make conversation.

Michael returns a few minutes later and observes the two of them ignoring each other. He snorts loudly.

“Normally we can’t get Gav here to shut up.”

“Oi!”

Ray’s lips twitch into something like a smile.

“Come on then,” Michael says, grabbing his sleeve and tugging him up off his chair. “Come meet the other weirdos who live here and then we’ll go play Xbox.”

The two of them leave without so much as a goodbye and Gavin frowns a bit. And then, when he’s done eating, traipses down to the lab where he throws himself into the nearest chair and says, “Michael’s brought a new friend.”

“I know,” Ryan replies patiently. He’s bent over a microscope. “I just met him.”

“He’s gonna end up staying like everyone does.” It comes out like he’s complaining, and maybe he is a bit but only because Michael was just totally ignoring him back there, and Ryan looks up with a slight a frown.

“Learn to share, Gavin,” he says. And then, cutting in before Gavin can open his mouth to protest further, “Now if you don’t mind, I’m busy. If you haven’t got any real problems I’d appreciate being left alone.”

Gavin huffs; Ryan’s still been all weird and distant lately. Feeling rather rejected, he wanders off to go find Geoff.

—

Of course, Ray does end up staying. Michael offers very little explanation for how they met, or why Ray’s suddenly decided to live with them, or even where he came from. As for Ray, he’s very quiet and seems a bit uncertain around them all. Shy if nothing else.

Michael’s the only one he seems to talk to. And they talk a lot. They’re constantly going out in the forest together on long walks that Gavin’s not invited on. Michael stops coming out with him and Ryan because he’s always out with Ray. And at night Ray’s always in his room and sometimes Gavin stops outside their closed door - totally not eavesdropping, just curious - and hears them. Talking and talking and talking. Sometimes the light is still on long past midnight.

Ray’s a bit strange, too. He’ll run out of the house at random moments, including in the middle of the night, and half the time Michael runs out after him.

Gavin’s not jealous.

Gavin is absolutely not jealous, he just - doesn’t like that his best friend has suddenly ditched him for someone else, someone who he can’t even get to know properly because they got off to such an awkward start. And it’s only heightened because Ryan’s still annoyed with him, or whatever, and it puts him in a bad mood because seriously, what could the two of them possibly be _talking_ about so much?

Deep and meaningful things, it seems, because sometimes Michael gives Ray these soft sort of looks and Ray gives these little smiles back like the two of them have some secret or shared experience. And Gavin’s hurt, a bit, because Michael never talks about anything like that with him. Clams up over the topic of his past and gets annoyed if Gavin tries to push it. Yet here he is opening up to some guy he just met out in the woods. Someone he’s barely known three weeks.

Okay, maybe he’s a bit jealous after all.

He finally gets Michael alone one night, when Ray’s in the shower and the two of them are hanging out in the lounge after dinner. Geoff is napping on the couch near them, snoring loudly, and Gavin is trying to work up the nerve to draw a dick on his face while he sleeps; every time he creeps forward he either starts giggling or Geoff stirs and he’s paranoid the other will wake up in the middle.

“Dude, dude, just do it,” Michael is whispering, stifling his own sniggers in the corner, and finally Gavin dances forward and draws it on his face. It’s crude and he stuffs up one of the balls, but Geoff just murmurs and swats at him then rolls over and continues snoring, and laughing like schoolchildren Michael and Gavin race out of the room and down the hall where they collapse against the wall in hysterics.

Gavin caps the marker and stuffs his fist in his mouth trying not to be too noisy. He can feel Michael shaking with mirth beside him and feels a sudden childish flash of glee. Happy to just be laughing with him again.

“Oh, my God,” Michael gasps finally, clutching his side. “I’m gonna piss myself.”

Gavin titters. They fall into a breathless silence, trying to recover, and after a minute Gavin looks over at Michael and smiles at him, something very fond rising up in his chest. Michael smiles back and for a moment it feels like things have settled back to normal.

Then the sound of the shower running down the hall stops and Michael glances over.

“Oh good,” he says, “Ray’s done.”

The speed at which Gavin’s good mood dissipates is incredible. He feels a flash of venom so acute it startles him; he’s not generally a bad tempered person but suddenly he just feels _sour_.

“Funny guy that Ray,” he says, before he can quite stop himself.

Michael’s head whips around so fast that his neck actually makes a rather alarming cracking noise.

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” he demands.

Gavin shrugs. “I dunno, he’s just… quiet, he’s always running out of the house, he doesn’t talk to anyone. You lot are always spending so much time together now.” It comes out more bitter than he intended and Michael freezes for a moment. Then scowls.

“You got a problem with it?”

“Yeah, I’m more of a cat person,” Gavin replies, and means it as a joke but Michael glares.

“And I’m an everything-except-Gavin person,” he spits. Gavin raises his eyebrows, because that - that _wasn’t_ a joke, or at least it didn’t sound like one. And they do this; they’re mean to each other a lot but it’s always in jest. Now there’s genuine vinegar flying around.

“And you, _you_ could put in more of a fucking effort,” Michael continues, almost defensively. “Instead of sulking about all the time.”

“Sulking about!”

“Give him a God damn chance, Gav. You should get to know him because guess what, he’s not going anywhere.”

Gavin bites his lip. He wants to argue, to say that he _tried_ and things are _awkward_ and he can be pretty damn shy as well when he gets around new people. But somehow he can’t bring himself to snap back at Michael. Can’t feel anything but hurt as he watches the other walk away.

The next day he decides to try harder with Ray.

It goes terribly.

They’re in the kitchen, again, and everyone else is off somewhere and they make eye contact and Gavin sort of smiles and Ray smiles back, and there’s a weird silence. And then Gavin thinks, _oh, I’ll offer him a drink_ , because that’s what you do when you want to get to know someone better, right?

He grabs two beers from the fridge - it’s another hot day; the summer’s lasting longer than usual this year - and offers one to Ray only for the other man to shake his head.

“Thanks, but, uh, I don’t drink.”

_Oh dear God kill me now_ , Gavin thinks. He literally did not plan further ahead than offering Ray a bev, and now he has to either put the other beer back in the fridge (awkward, awkward, _awkward_ ) or keep it out and drink it himself (which he does not want to, since he doesn’t actually like beer all that much)-

He’s standing there staring at Ray and Ray’s staring back and both of them look like they want a sinkhole to open up beneath them and swallow them whole and-

“I’ll, uh, give this to Ryan then,” Gavin says - the first excuse that springs to mind - and leaves the room immediately.

_Well. I am never talking to Ray again_ , he thinks - his face is burning - only to quickly realise that he probably should have said Geoff, not Ryan, but it’s too late now, he’s halfway down the stairs to the lab and Ray’s watching him from the kitchen.

Ryan is packing up a bag and for a moment Gavin falters.

“You’re going out?” he asks, and Ryan spins around. Nods.

“Yeah,” he says, hefting the backpack onto his shoulder.

Gavin frowns again. It’s the cumulative effect of everything that’s happened the last few days but he feels another pang of hurt that Ryan’s going out without asking him again.

“I’ll come with you,” he says, already moving to grab his own stuff from the corner of the lab. “Oh, also, you have to drink this beer.”

“Umm… why?” Ryan asks, looking rather confused as the bottle is thrust into his hand.

“Because I don’t want it.”

“So put it back in the fridge?”

“I can’t, Ray’s in there.”

Ryan raises his eyebrows, looking bemused. Gavin grabs one of his cameras - not the phantom - and trots up to his side.

“Are we going then?”

“You’re really coming?” There’s something odd in Ryan’s voice and Gavin freezes, looking away. Suddenly feeling like he might not be wanted. But Ryan says then, “Thought you might prefer to stick around here with Michael.”

“Apparently Michael would rather stick around here with _Ray_.”

“I’m your backup option then? Gavin you wound me.” He claps a hand to his heart theatrically but there’s something a little too sincere underlying it. Something that reminds Gavin of how he himself reacted to Michael the other day and _oh, okay_.

He stares at Ryan and the other man looks away quickly. Says “Okay well, let’s go then,” and heads off, taking a swig of the beer as he goes. Gavin trailing along behind.

He watches the other man as they head down the hill towards the forest. Things are becoming clear now. Maybe Ryan isn’t even conscious of it - in fact, he more likely than not isn’t - but Gavin realises suddenly that he’s only started being more distant since Gavin began getting much closer to Michael. And it’s not jealousy but something close to it; maybe he misses Gavin the same way Gavin misses Michael now. It did used to be just the two of them, after all.

Something about that makes him smile, suddenly, because Ryan can be closed off enough that seeing anything like proof of his affection is… nice. Grinning, Gavin skips up next to him and lets Michael and Ray fade from his mind, lets himself fall back into how it used to be before everyone else came along. The two of them off on their stupid little adventures.

He spends a lot of time with Ryan after that.

Stops moping around the house after Michael and forces himself into Ryan’s expeditions; it doesn’t take long for Ryan to seem to (again, unconsciously) regain his confidence and start asking Gavin along again anyway.

It’s around that time that he starts looking at Ryan differently.

He’s always liked him a lot but he figured it was just because Ryan had been so good to him. Taken him in and given him a place to stay, a roof over his head and food. Taken care of him. Given him a job.

But sometime between the summer fading and the forest turning crimson and gold with autumn he finds himself seeking out Ryan’s affection more. Starts to worry more about what the other thinks of him, starts getting weirdly nervous whenever Ryan smiles at him. Starts wanting to _impress_ him.

It’s embarrassing at first but it isn’t long before he can’t lie to himself, can’t deny that he has a hell of a crush and it’s only growing by the day.

He’s distracted from it, though, by Michael. Michael who he’s barely talked to for the last few weeks, outside of their usual conversations at mealtimes. He’s back to hanging out with Geoff and Jack, or Ryan down in the lab, and he’s sort of figured (and it’s petulant, sure, but whatever) that Michael doesn’t care much. After all he’s got Ray now, right?

Geoff pulls him aside one evening, though. Drags him out to the patio and says, “Okay, the fuck’s going on with you two?”

“Us two?” For a terrible moment Gavin thinks he means Ryan, thinks he’s _noticed._

“You and Michael,” Geoff explains. “Why the fuck are you ignoring him?”

“Ignoring _him_?!” Gavin cries, indignantly. “He’s the one what replaced me with version 2.0, new and improved, werewolf boy.”

Geoff stares at him for a moment. Then shakes his head slowly.

“Jesus Christ you’re dysfunctional,” he says. “No one _replaced_ anyone.”

“He bloody well did. They’re always off together and he, he never wants to hang out with me anymore, so. If he thinks I’m ignoring him he’s brought it on himself.” Geoff’s always been the easiest of them to rant to; he never judges (even if he does tease) and somehow it always makes Gavin feel better just to tell someone.

“Why can’t the three of you all be friends? Ray’s a cool guy, you’ll like him once you get to know him.”

“I don’t think he wants to get to know me,” Gavin says, and Geoff’s face softens. He knows enough about Gavin’s weird crippling rejection issues to understand what might have gone on.

“It’s not you,” Geoff says. “Ray’s not been a werewolf for long, okay? He’s not quite in control of his powers yet. If he’s weird around you it’s because he’s scared he might hurt you. Humans are fragile.” 

That… makes a lot of sense, actually; part of the awkwardness had come from Gavin being put off by the fact that Ray always seemed to be trying to keep some distance between them when they talked. That he avoided being around him sometimes.

Geoff gives him a shove back towards the house. “You’re both upset. So go fix things, kiddo.”

Gavin pouts but drags his feet back inside; this new information about Ray has actually put things in perspective a lot. All the times he runs out of the house at night only for them to hear distant howls later on. Why Michael goes after him. 

_Could have just told me,_ he thinks a little bitterly.

Michael is sitting up on the roof. Ray’s not with him. When Gavin comes and sits next to him, he shifts over a little so their knees are touching.

“I miss you, boi,” Gavin says softly. 

Michael lets out a breath. “I miss you too,” he replies.

“Sorry I was being a pleb before.”

“No, I was too.” Michael glances over at him. “You pissed at me?”

“Not anymore. Geoff told me about why Ray’s scared to talk to me and stuff.” Gavin scoffs a bit. “And here I thought he just thought I was an idiot.”

“Well, that too,” Michael teases, and Gavin smiles a bit.

They’re quiet for a moment.

“It’s different with Ray,” Michael speaks up then. “He and I… we’re not like you, and we’re not like the others.”

“What do you mean?’

“We’re not human,” Michael says, glancing across at him. “But we weren’t born like we are either. We were made. It’s hard to get used to. Ray’s not been a werewolf all that long; he’s still getting used to it. So I’ve been helping him and it… it helps me, too, being able to talk to someone. About the shit that comes with being turned into a…” he trails off and Gavin bites his lip.

It’s more than Michael’s ever said before about what it’s like being, well, what he is, at least beyond the scientific, the facts that he shares with Ryan.

“I get it,” he says, quietly. “You and Ray can share that stuff. That’s good. I’m… glad for you, I was being stupid before.”

“No, I was being stupid,” Michael replies. “Just ‘cause you’re human doesn’t mean… doesn’t mean you can’t understand it. Doesn’t mean I can’t tell you this shit. You’re my friend, after all, that’s what they’re for right?”

“If that’s what you want,” Gavin says.

Michael smiles at him then. The soft sincere sort of smile he mostly gives Ray, and Gavin smiles tentatively back.

They talk that night. For hours as the moon comes up, big and round and full, and Gavin half wonders if they’ll be interrupted by Ray - werewolves and the moon, right? - but apparently it doesn’t work that way. Nothing disturbs them.

They talk and Michael tells him more than night than he ever has before. About coming back and how it works and some of the things he’s seen. They talk about dying, and Gavin’s family, and the others in the house and how things feel _right_ here, for both of them, for _all_ of them. How Michael wants Ray to feel that too, eventually.

It’s stupid and sappy and they’re up until dawn and then they both go downstairs and fall asleep on the couch until past noon, all tangled together with Gavin’s head on Michael’s shoulder and Michael’s legs up over his lap, and after that things are okay. Michael brings him out more when he goes off with Ray, and sometimes Ray tags along with Ryan and Gavin. They play a lot of Xbox together. The leaves fall. Things get better.

And Gavin continues to fall for Ryan.

Because with things fixed now there’s no more distractions and he finds himself watching the other man, and the more he watches the more he _thinks_ about how it might be like if things changed. And part of that scares him, the idea of change, but for now it’s just that - an _idea_.

He kisses Ryan one day, sort of by accident. They’re joking around in the lab and he starts going on about Ryan giving him a goodnight kiss before he goes up to bed, and somewhere in the kerfuffle that follows Gavin plants one on his cheek. Laughs it off immediately and then goes upstairs and can’t stop thinking about it and it’s a downhill spiral from there; he realises that as long as he makes it a joke he can keep doing it.

After that he falls hard. Autumn hits and things are changing in the forest. There’s a lot to do and they do it together and-

Gavin films Ryan, a lot. He looks good in the wind and the falling leaves. Or down in the lab, biting his lip in intense concentration, glasses perched at the end of his nose. Gavin spends more time down there. Sometimes Ryan reads aloud to him, bits of mythology or lore about the creatures they’re studying. He can’t even focus on the words for the other man’s voice.

But it’s funny because there’s Michael, too; sometimes Gavin still finds himself seeking out the other’s affection in a way that goes beyond just friendship. And Geoff, and occasionally Jack. He kisses them too, sometimes to detract attention from the fact that he mostly does it to Ryan. Sometimes because he just feels like it.

It’s stupid and he has no idea what he’s playing at himself. Sometimes he over thinks it at night and sometimes he just lets himself drift in a buzzing sort of contentment that for now things are fine, and it’s nice to have people to love, and it’s not like he’s going to do anything about it anytime soon, because Ryan hasn’t noticed.

Except-

Except-

Except then, as autumn draws to a close - Ryan starts looking back.

—

—

—

“Ray’s been looking to talk to you,” Jack says.

Gavin looks up. He’s drinking a glass of water slowly by the sink and trying not to throw up, and when he sees Jack in the doorway watching him his first instinct is to flinch back and sort of try and get into the shadows, so Jack can’t see the stitches in his face. His stupid glowing eyes. The body parts that aren’t his.

He registers the words a moment later, and bites his lip.

“He hasn’t said anything to me.”

“He’s waiting for the right moment. You’ve seemed…” Jack trails off. Takes a step forward, and Gavin fights the urge to try and press against the wall or squeeze himself behind the refrigerator.

“...fragile, lately,” Jack settles on. “He’s trying to be careful, we all are.”

_Careful is good_ , Gavin thinks, vaguely, but all he can focus on right now is that Jack looks like he is going to touch him and he doesn’t want him to. At the start, when he first came back, that was all he wanted. Thought it might make him feel normal. Now he can’t bear it because part of this body isn’t his and the rest of it is disgusting besides.

They still look at him wrong.

“Will you talk to him later?” Jack asks, and Gavin nods. 

“Sure,” he says, barely even registering what he’s agreeing to. Just wants to end the conversation. And escapes back to his room.

The last few days have been worse.

He doesn’t know what’s been going on in the rest of the house but an apathy has overtaken him of late and he does little more than sit in his room. Thinking and feeling sorry for himself and trying as hard as he can to remember whatever it is he’s forgotten.

Somehow he’s got it in his head that that’s important.

That if he can remember it, things will be better.

—

He pulls out his laptop, later on, and opens up some of his old video files.

He sits for hours watching through them. They range from back when he first arrived here - the slight awkwardness between himself and Ryan at the start as they got used to each other. Early summer in the forest, fairies darting between the flowers, flashes of sparkling pink and yellow. The glitter of pixie dust over all their clothes.

Later Geoff starts appearing in them. Then Michael, Jack, Ray. Videos of them at the lake. The beautiful dusk out on the water. They’re all smiling and relaxed. Nothing like now.

He didn’t realise until now, looking back over it, quite how much he filmed them at home. Drunken nights with Michael where their only memory of what happened came from watching this back over the next day. Pillow fights and dancing on the tables. Pranks played on Ryan and Jack.

Later on in the footage there are long lingering shots of Ryan without any voice over. Like Gavin was staring at him through the viewfinder and didn’t realise he was filming. Ryan walking or talking or working. Those make him uncomfortable suddenly, make something stir in his stomach that he doesn’t want to think on right now. He goes back to the others. The ones where they’re smiling and happy and he notices things now he didn’t at the time.

How Geoff touches Jack more than he touches most of the rest of them. How Jack smiles at Ray sometimes when the rest of them are all being noisy. How Michael darts fond looks towards the camera.

He’s not in any of the clips.

His voice is, his laugh, but not himself. Just the occasional shadow or reflection. 

It hits him with a terrible pang that he can’t remember what he used to look like. When he sees himself in the mirror it’s this terrible pale spectre of himself and-

And-

And he can’t see himself in these clips, he could as well be how he is now, hidden behind the camera.

Biting his lip, he slams the laptop shut. Puts his head in his hands and breathes.

—

Gavin stands in front of the mirror. Forces himself to meet the eyes of the ghoul that looks back at him.

It’s late afternoon and the sun is sinking already, early because it’s winter. A golden light is filtering through the blinds, painting his skin. It gives him a bit of colour, makes him look more alive. His eyes are in shadow and they don’t look quite as unnatural as they usually do.

Slowly he lifts a hand up - his real hand - and covers one half of his face in the mirror, the half with stitches.

The other half looks back at him. He looks mostly normal.

“Damn it,” he hisses then. Squeezes his eyes shut and brings his fists down against the sink, again and again. It hurts. He stops before it can bruise because bruises won’t go away. They’ll stop hurting but they won’t go away.

He’s never felt less like himself, and the shame rises up again. More intense than ever. Burning and burning and-

He looks up again and sees that terrible sewn-up face looking back at him, patchwork doll, and feels so sick that he thinks _no wonder,_ no wonder the others can’t even look at him anymore. Even Ryan, even _Ryan_ , deep inside, must feel the same. He just hides it better.

—

Gavin goes back to his room and that day he locks the door.


	3. michael

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TW: Suicidal thoughts (sort of? from someone who knows they can't die permanently, but be warned, intense emotional pain/grieving/fairly dark thoughts)**

**iii. michael**

Michael never remembers what it’s like being dead.

Sometimes he wakes up after ten minutes and sometimes after ten hours, but every time there’s a blank spot in his memory. It doesn’t feel like he was asleep but neither does it feel like there was nothing, darkness. It’s like he just skips from being dead to alive again.

He’s seen ghosts.

He’s spoken to them, the more aware ones. Knows the world looks different to them. For some it’s more vivid, more colourful and noisy and vibrant, like everything here is bolder and brighter than they’ll ever be again. For others it’s whitewashed and pallid like they’re not really here, like they’re trapped in an old photograph or fading memory. 

It feels like that now, here in the house.

He sits in the window seat at the end of the upstairs corridor. Curled up in the shadows where no one can see him unless they really look. It was grey outside today but now the sun is sinking, filtering through the clouds, painting the windowsill with creeping streaks of pale light that do nothing to warm him. The house is empty and filled with a lingering quiet. It reminds Michael of a library, or maybe a graveyard. Everyone too afraid to speak.

The hallway lies in shadow. No one’s turned the lights on yet. Gavin usually does because he’s the only one who comes up here who can’t see well in the dark but it seems that’s changed now, since he’s returned.

He watches, silent, as after a while Gavin comes upstairs. He moves like a ghost too; drifts along with his head down and his shoulders hunched. Steps light and quiet like he’s afraid of being heard. He goes into the bathroom and shuts the door and Michael bites his lip because that’s not him, that’s not his Gavin. His Gavin was boisterous and noisy and always turned on the lights.

He hugs his knees tighter. Shivers a little as the weak sunlight fades. Swallows the upset that rises in his throat because he can’t look at Gavin, can’t _look_ at him without thinking of everything that is no longer the same, everything he’s painfully acutely aware of-

(and it reminds him of _himself_ because _he’s_ not the same, not the same as he was before he died that first time either, and not the same as he was just after he came back because it’s been too long, too long, he’s been alive too long and _it’s a fucking curse_ and now Gavin is different too-)

Later he watches Gavin leave the bathroom. He looks small and alone, a pale spectre in the darkness of the corridor. The worst are the ghosts who no one can see but Michael and all the other dead things.

Part of him wants to go to him because Gavin looks lost and pained and it hurts Michael too to see him like that. But it also hurts to look at him or touch him or get near him and when Gavin goes into his room and shuts the door he hates himself for being relieved, for the way he lets out a little exhale of breath and digs his nails into his palms. 

—

Earlier.

Michael is lying on the couch with his legs up over the armrest, methodically picking out the cushion stuffing through a split seam in the fabric. Normally he’d avoid this wilful destruction of someone else’s property, but the chair belongs to Ryan and fuck Ryan. Fuck Ryan, fuck Ryan, _fuck Ryan_.

He rips viciously at the stuffing and the couch tears a little more and he squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to shake. At the back of his mind is the last time he saw Gavin alive. The last time he touched him and he was warm and living and breathing. Here on this couch, on his lap, worrying about things in his stupid way. Over complicating problems and relationships just because he couldn’t quite seem to fathom that they all liked him a lot more than he thought they did. Ryan especially. There was something endearing about that and Michael feels his eyes burn because now, now, he sees Gavin’s fear when he looks at them and it’s acute and piercing and worst of all it is well-founded. He thinks they don’t want him and that’s true but not for all the reasons he thinks it is.

“Michael.”

The voice makes him jump and his eyes fly open. It’s Geoff.

He relaxes. Sits up a bit as Geoff drifts over to him. The demon looks nothing but tired nowadays, which speaks volumes because he doesn’t even _need_ to sleep.

“We need to talk,” Geoff says then, and Michael just nods.

Except they don’t talk; they both just sort of sit there lost in thought. They do this a lot lately. It feels like there’s a lot that needs to be said about this, about all of it, but when it comes down to it there’s _nothing_.

Gavin is back and there’s nothing they can do about it and he’s falling apart and there’s nothing they can fucking do about that either.

It’s the way of things.

It’s conversations Michael has had late into the night with Ray. It’s the way Ray looks when he’s struggling not to transform; when he loses the fight and has to flee the house before he accidentally hurts one or all of them. When he comes back in the grey hours of the morning, face drawn, covered in dirt and grime, looking like he hates himself. It’s how Michael hates himself too sometimes. Wakes with a lurch in the night and can’t remember if he was sleeping or if he died and feels that weird tingle deep in his heart, like there’s something _wrong_ there, something wrong with _him_ because it’s not natural. It’s not natural to be like this; he wasn’t even born this way. Ray wasn’t either. Or Gavin now. They were turned into these things, these-

These-

“He’s not doing so well.” Geoff’s voice is low and pained and it hurts him as well, Michael knows. Geoff doesn’t know how it feels, not the way he does, but he’s the one of them who knows the most about magic. Has it ingrained into his being and so he can _feel_ the wrongness in what Ryan’s done here, all the ways in which Gavin is just inherently _not the same_ as he was before and that’s what makes it hard to look at him. 

“Yeah, I’ve seen,” Michael replies.

He has. And he knows how it makes Gavin flinch when Michael turns away from him or cuts off their conversations but he can’t deal with it, with looking at the scars and stitches and the deep ache in his own gut at the sight of it.

Maybe it’s selfish.

There are footsteps in the corridor outside and both of them look up. It’s Ryan who passes by, but he glances through the open door of the room and then, when he sees the two of them in there, hesitates before stepping inside.

Michael stiffens a little, exchanging a glance with Geoff beside him. They’ve made no secret of their anger towards the other man. Michael knows Geoff’s chastised him a few times since the event but mostly they’ve ignored him, because there really isn’t much they can do about it.

But now - now Ryan’s striding towards them with a hard set to his face, like _he’s_ the one who’s annoyed with _them_. Michael sits up a bit, already glaring.

“What the fuck do you want?” he snaps.

Ryan stops a few paces away. He folds his arms. When he speaks it’s calm but cold.

“I don’t know what you two think you’re doing,” he says, “But it sure as fuck isn’t helping Gavin.”

“We’re not doing a fucking thing,” Michael starts. It tastes like a lie and Ryan just shakes his head, not having any of it.

“I’m sick of you two moping around just because I didn’t listen to you-”

The anger washes over Michael like a red-hot wave, filling him, consuming him. He’s on his feet and screaming in Ryan’s face before he can stop himself.

“You think that’s what this is about? That is not what this is fucking about! _You didn’t save him_ , you didn’t fucking save him, okay?! Take one God damn look at him, he’s _miserable_. He hasn’t smiled once since you brought him back, just… can’t you _see_ , Ryan, can’t you see what you’ve _done_ to him, you’ve turned him into… into…” he trails off, frustrated. And it sucks because he can feel tears rising up and he doesn’t want to cry, not here, not now.

Ryan’s got his lips pressed together like he’s upset but he’s doing that thing, that thing Michael hates where he closes himself off and goes all detached like this is just some _experiment_ , like he’s trying to stay impartial towards things that he shouldn’t.

“You’re not helping,” he says, accusingly. Glares at both of them. “For God’s sake, of course it’s gonna be hard to adjust but it’s you two - it’s _you two_ \- that are making it so much worse. Fuck, Jack’s trying, Ray’s trying, _I’m_ trying but how the hell are we meant to help him get used to this when you two keep looking at him like he’s a-”

“Like he’s a what?” Geoff asks then. Michael’s glad the others spoke up because he’s pretty sure he can’t say a thing right now. There was truth in Ryan’s words and it stings.

“Anything he is,” Geoff continues, “Is what _you_ made him. I’m not just mad because you defied me Ryan, I’m mad because you broke the rules. They’re there for a reason and _this_ is the reason. What Gavin is now _shouldn’t exist_ and that’s part of why he feels so bad-”

“If Gavin shouldn’t exist then neither should Michael,” Ryan cuts in. 

Michael stops short. He can’t breathe, it feels like his lungs have filled with ice cold water and this is why, this is _why_ , he _knows_ he’s not natural and he knows Gavin must feel it too, deep inside. That underlying _wrongness_ that permeates everything he does.

It went away.

It went away for a long while, after years and years of wandering. It went away when he found a place here but this whole fiasco? This has brought it back up again. Looking at Gavin and seeing just how much he doesn’t fit into this world anymore, with his stitches and his glowing eyes - just like Michael’s - and the way none of them can forget that he should be dead dead _dead_ -

It makes him feel it even more.

But Ryan doesn’t understand, Ryan doesn’t _get_ that, and he’s looking at Michael now like he’s disappointed in him.

That hurts.

“You think I don’t know that.” When he finds his voice again it comes out a croak. “You think I don’t realise that I should be dead too?”

“I think that you know how hard this is for him and you should be helping him through it-”

That is true, that is devastatingly true but Michael doesn’t want to hear all the ways he’s letting Gavin down. It’s easier to hold onto the anger of this than to face up to the fact that maybe he’s a coward, maybe he’s not over all the things he thought he was over-

“Fuck you, Ryan.” He’s shaking now. “You’re right, I know exactly how he feels, and I know it fucking _sucks_ and I know you’re responsible for-”

“For what?” Ryan demands. “It gets better doesn’t it? You got better? You were - you _are_ happy here. No matter how much it sucks _you got over it_ and Gavin will too, he bounces back from things, you _know_ that-”

Guilt is mixing with the anger burning in Michael’s gut and it makes him want to throw up. Because Ryan’s right, he needs to help Gavin, more than anyone else he knows what he’s going through - he knows that - he’s known since this started - but by God if the thought of dredging up his own past pain doesn’t _terrify_ him and it’s easier-

It’s just easier to be _angry_ -

“You’re pissed off at me for bringing him back but _you_ were brought back and you’re _fine now_ , you’re fine, so no matter what the drawbacks now Gavin will-”

“Gavin will what?” Michael spits. “ _Thank_ you for this? When he outlives you, and his family, and it’s been a hundred fucking years and he’s still wandering around in that shambles of a body? Oh wait, no, some fucking human will probably fucking _shoot him in the head_ first because you know what, Ryan, you know fucking what, not everyone’s like you. They look at us and they see _monsters_ , okay?! That’s what things like me and things like Gav are to people. Not miracles. _Monsters_.”

Ryan opens his mouth but Michael pushes on. The words are spilling out now, bitter on his tongue, nearly choking him in their haste to get out-

“Maybe I should thank the asshole who brought _me_ back - oh wait, he didn’t do it for me. He did it just to see if he _could_ ; I’m just a fucking experiment. So drop the fucking saviour complex, okay?” He can’t meet Ryan’s eyes even as he says it. “That necromancer didn’t bring me back for me and you didn’t bring Gavin back for _Gavin_. You did it for _you_ , because _you_ couldn’t live without him, and now he’s the one paying the fucking price.”

“That’s not true,” Ryan starts, softly - but there’s something pained in it, and Michael looks at him and for a moment he feels bad, then, because Ryan’s walls have dropped a little and he sees suddenly that he’s hurting as much as the rest of them. That looking at Gavin like this is hard for him too.

But he bites his lip and shakes his head and hardens his heart.

“It’s true and you know it, and you know what else? You’re not the only one who loves Gavin, so _that’s why_ , okay, that’s why I can’t just _pretend_ everything’s back to normal. Because nothing’s normal about any of this, about him _or_ me _._ Like I said, I was just an _experiment_. And guess what, it worked, and guess what else, _sometimes I fucking wish it hadn’t_ and I bet you anything Gavin’s going to feel like that too, if he doesn’t already. Better off dead, okay, Ryan? That’s me and that’s Gavin for you. Better off _fucking_ dead.”

He doesn’t mean that.

He doesn’t mean that and he knows it deep down; he hasn’t felt like this since the months before he stumbled upon this house and its ragtag little band of occupants. He hasn’t felt like this but it’s all being dredged up again with Gavin how he is, that deep bitter _pain_ that consumed him for the empty years between coming back and finding _here_.

They’re both staring at him - even Geoff - and he turns on his heel and starts to leave the room.

“Michael,” Geoff calls after him, but he doesn’t stop. He hears the demon start arguing with Ryan again even as he runs out into the hall. Down the corridor and out the back door.

It’s cold outside, but he barely feels it. There’s a horrible pressure in his chest like he wants to cry but can’t. He jogs across the patio and into the yard. Out the back gate and down the hill towards the forest.

He paces for hours in the dark and wet. If he turns away from the light of the house, visible through the treeline, and lets the woods stretch out black and forbidding in front of him, it feels like before. Like he’s walking alone with nowhere to go back to.

That’s not true just like what he said to Ryan is not true, not anymore, but it sure feels like that now.

And later, when he goes back inside and sits in the death-silent house and watches Gavin walk like a ghost in the dark, it feels like it even more.

—

—

—

Michael has been dead-alive for almost fifty years. He remembers the Cold War in great detail. He remembers the weird consumerist rise of magic and how it became all trendy for a bit before that died down and humans in the States starting kicking out anything that wasn’t ‘normal’. How the weird and wonderful retreated into forests and country towns and their own communes.

He remembers how at some point he moves to a new city, twenty-seven and working as an electrician, and how he dies one night after getting hit in the head with a glass bottle in a drunken fight and through some fucking weird turn of events his body ends up getting handed over to (or perhaps stolen by) a necromancer and he is alive again three days later, except nothing is the same. Nothing is the same because everyone looks at him differently from that day on, including himself, and it takes months of struggle before he can even come to terms with what he is now (immortal-inhuman-undead- _freak_ ) and he realises very quickly that he has nowhere to go.

His family thinks he is dead. He’s halfway home before he decides it would hurt more if they realised he wasn’t, not with what he is now. 

He could work but he doesn’t actually need to eat, and for a long time he just can’t work up the motivation to do anything much except _wander_. Because he falls into a slump and just feels sick, sick, _sick_ with what he is now. There’s never a point where he thinks being immortal could be cool, because it doesn’t work that way, not when it happens to you. Not when you feel a pervading wrongness in your being twenty-four seven and even the magical, the humanlike fey who still live in the cities at this point, look at you like you shouldn’t exist.

That’s the start of what he comes to think of as his fifty-year-long existential crisis. He spends too long thinking about what the fuck he’s meant to do now, and how he shouldn’t be doing fucking _anything_ because he’s dead. And drinking a lot because, hey, indestructible liver, except even that’s not a plus because he has no one to drink with. 

He doesn’t bother getting close to people because they’re just going to die anyway. There are a few one night stands and now and then he meets people - the occasional vampire who strikes up an interesting conversation with him, or unnaturally pretty fey with eyes that glow like his - but conversation inevitably turns to what he is, and when they realise he’s something _made_ \- he sees the way their faces twist in disgust because that kind of magic is inherently _wrong_ , it defies the rules and something about that just repels people.

He spends a while waiting for a nuclear bomb to come along and end things except he’d probably survive that, too, wouldn’t he? Or maybe that would do it. Being obliterated into ashes. Maybe that would finally kill him.

He wanders for a very long time. Sometimes he goes city to city and talks to people and sometimes he spends days-weeks-months alone, on backroads or crossing fields with nothing but his own thoughts and that dull apathy in the pit of his stomach.

The state of the world changes. People stop being so afraid. The seventies hit, the eighties. The Berlin Wall comes down.

He gets used to it because he has no other choice, really. Gets used to the constant feeling of wrongness. Gets used to being alone, in some ways.

He starts doing things, stupid things, because the adrenaline rush makes him feel properly alive again, if only for a second. Little vigilante acts of justice - stopping muggers in the street - or on the flip side, starting barfights for the hell of it. He makes lists of places he wants to travel but never quite gets around to actually going. He dies a few times - drowns accidentally once, murdered in bad parts of town a couple of times - but not as often as one would probably think. Never deliberately, either, although sometimes - sometimes there are accidents he could have avoided, maybe, if he put his mind to it. And maybe he’s curious, each time, if his immortality is still in place, if this one time it won’t work and he’ll finally be gone-

(Maybe sometimes when he wakes up cold and alone he’s faintly, apathetically disappointed-)

But people tend to leave him alone; he has that sort of aura. And after a while he picks up odd jobs just to indulge in stupid material excesses again, like cheeseburgers and alcohol and video games.

He still never stays in one place for long.

Human cities aren’t hostile, not really, sometimes they can’t even tell what he is, but he can’t stand to be around normal people for long now. Can’t look at them without thinking about how they’re gonna grow old and wither away and die and he’ll still be standing when they do.

—

Two months before he meets Ryan and Gavin, Michael is in a little town out in the west. He’s passing through the way he passes through every place he goes, but this town is different - half the population are vampires and the rest witches and wizards of some sort. They’re on the edge of a desert where basilisks are rumoured to lurk.

People here side eye him even as he walks down the main street; he knows they can tell what he is but by now he lets their gazes slide off him like he’s something too slippery to be held. All he wants is a cold drink and maybe an ice cream (because food is something to live for, man, for the last few weeks he’s just been eating his way through this part of the country and he knows he’ll get bored of it like he gets bored of everything eventually but it’s something, okay, it’s something that’s keeping him from just lying down and not moving for a week. He did that once too.)

He passes the fortune teller’s shop without a second thought - except then he pauses, turns back around. A niggling curiosity worming at him. There are frauds galore in this world but there’s enough real magic in this town that any fakers would have been run out by now.

Suddenly he’s morbidly interested to know what a seer might say about his future. He’s never going to die so surely it must be infinite; surely, eventually, something must happen. He cannot just walk around forever.

Before he quite knows what he’s doing he’s pushing open the door and stepping inside.

The fortune teller looks like most witches he’s met; a calming sort of aura around her. She’s old but that’s encouraging; divining powers improve with age. The minute she takes his hands and looks into his eyes he sees the realisation when she notices what he is.

“Yeah,” he says, a bit self consciously, “I know. I either have too much future or none at all, probably.”

She doesn’t reply, just keeps staring at him, and he starts to think _oh fuck_ because maybe there really is nothing, maybe his days just stretch before him endlessly. Just… nothing, walking and walking and growing bored of everything. Living forever but never doing _anything_.

Fifty years is a long time and he’s literally wasted it all away; even immediately after he came back he was too preoccupied with angsting over what had been done to him to accomplish anything.

“Is it bad?” he asks, with a nervous sort of laugh.

She drops his hands and clasps his cheeks instead. He fights the urge to flinch because no one has touched him properly in a long time. 

“You’re scared,” she says. It’s not a question.

He opens his mouth to protest but he can’t bring himself to lie; since the minute he walked in here the existential crisis intensified a hundred fold and suddenly he’s terrified, terrified of what she might be about to tell him. Of the prospect that maybe he’s never going to die but he’s never going to live either, not properly.

He clamps his mouth shut and looks away and nods, feeling vulnerable.

She pats his cheek and then lets her hand slip away, smiling now.

“Don’t be. Lucky boy. You’re about to find love. More love than you’ll know what to do with.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” The anger hits out of nowhere because that line sounds like something from a bad fortune cookie. ‘ _You’re going to find love’_ \- that’s the sort of thing charlatans say, and he doesn’t know when he suddenly put so much stock in this, in getting a solid answer - he rounds on her but the fortune teller spins around, eyes flashing.

“Yes, that’s what I said,” she snaps, seeming irritated that he’s doubting her abilities - but after a second she must register the frantic fear in his eyes, because she softens.

“Keep walking,” she says then. “You’ll find them all soon enough.”

“ _Them all?_ ”

“You want specifics? Five of them, to be precise.” 

“And you’re talking like…” he trails off, extremely confused, because she said _love_ like _love_ -love and when he came in here he expected something different. Like   _nothing_ or maybe, he didn’t know, fucking saving the world or something. 

“...all at the same time?” he asks then, a little weakly. He doesn’t know if he wants a yes or a no. If a God damn six-way is a more terrifying prospect than falling in love five times and watching each of them die or fail in turn. But she just rolls her eyes.

“I’m here to tell your future, not give you the Talk.” And then, after a very awkward moment of silence, “Pay me now, please.”

He leaves the desert town with an ice cream in hand and more questions than he’s ever had before; most of him still thinks that must have been some sort of scam because _what the fuck. Just, what the actual fuck_. 

After a while it fades to the back of his mind, just another stupid weird happening. He can’t believe it so he ignores it. Goes back to travelling, drifting, and the thought of her prophecy doesn’t cross his mind again.

At least until he meets the others.

—

The only reason Michael goes off to investigate the scientist on the top of the hill is because he’s bored, really.

He’s been wandering for two months and has ended up out here, in the countryside near the forest, and it seems like ‘Doctor Haywood’ is the only halfway interesting person around. Also he’s starting to feel like he’s just some sort of leech wandering around draining the world of its resources while contributing nothing, so. Might as well donate his everlasting body to science or whatever.

Ryan isn’t much like what he expects. Then again he isn’t sure what he was expecting. Not someone so young, that’s for sure. Also, he’s… intense.

Most humans don’t care much about the fey. Barely spare them a second glance and certainly don’t look at them the way Ryan looks at him. Not like he’s a puzzle to be solved but like he’s something special.

“That’s incredible,” he says, when he opens the door and Michael explains who he is and why he’s there and “I dunno, if you like, want to fucking science me up or whatever. I don’t know.”

Michael blinks because he actually sounds _excited_ rather than horrified or just curious.

“It… it’s definitely unique,” he replies, a little warily.

“It’s _extraordinary_ ,” Ryan insists. “How many times did you say you’ve died?” He’s leading Michael down to the lab and he looks around the house as he goes; it’s old and kind of spooky but there’s something else to it, a homeliness like it’s being properly lived in. Something he hasn’t felt in any of the places he’s stayed in a long time.

“I… uh, can’t remember, I’d have to think back on it. Maybe six or seven since the first time.” He pauses as they reach the stairwell. “You can kill me if you want.”

Ryan freezes. Turns to look at him, eyes wide. “What?”

Michael raises and lowers a shoulder. “If that would progress your science or whatever. I don’t give a fuck. I’ll just come back anyway.”

Ryan’s mouth drops open. For a minute he doesn’t seem to know what to say.

Michael stares back at him and then starts to wonder if he’s made some sort of faux pas; he hasn’t hung around people in a while and certainly hasn’t talked this openly about what he is.

But Ryan just shakes his head.

“While I can’t deny it would be interesting to observe, I’m not inclined to do any sort of experiment that harms _anyone_. Fey or otherwise.”

“But I’ll heal.”

“You’ll still have died. That matters.” Ryan pauses then, and gives him an odd, soft sort of look that makes something twist in Michael’s gut.

It’s been too long since someone looked at him that kindly. Since someone seemed to feel _sorry_ for him and for a moment he drinks it in, indulges in it.

Ryan takes him into the lab then, where, of course, he meets Gavin. 

Michael isn’t quite sure what to make of the two of them at first. He was sort of expecting Ryan to live alone here so to discover he has company - and a demon, as they later mention offhandedly, like that is apparently a normal thing which it really fucking _isn’t_ , even among the fey - is a bit startling.

Then again, Gavin in general is startling, as is the way he plays off Ryan. Michael isn’t sure if he’s only noticing it because he’s been so long without engaging with other people but the two of them have a closeness that he suddenly envies. Gavin asks stupid questions throughout; he’s intrigued by Michael but is much less tactful than Ryan is, and Michael gets annoyed but not properly angry, not the way he sometimes does get, because the way Ryan casts Gavin glances that are fond below their irritation strikes something in him.

And Gavin’s not unfriendly, and not afraid of Michael either, not the way other people he’s met can be. Like Ryan he just seems very, very interested.

“You should stay for dinner,” he says, later on, when Ryan’s packing up.

Michael casts him a glance. He’s a bit pissed off because Gavin keeps prying; he answered some questions for Ryan when the other man left the room earlier, about how he became what he is and how old he is and how everything works, and it left him drained enough that he doesn’t want to repeat it but Gavin just keeps _asking_.

“If you’re there it’ll put me right off my food,” he replies, but Gavin doesn’t take offence.

“Ryan’s making enchiladas,” he says instead. “They’re top.”

“A man of many talents, it seems,” Michael muses. But shrugs, then nods, and Gavin seems pleased.

“Top,” he says again. That apparently means something to him in his weird British-speak. Ryan calls him at that moment to help with something, and Michael is left on his own.

He goes to wander the house after a while. There are photographs on the wall of a family - Ryan’s? - old faded dusty things. But signs of life from now, too. Files and books scattered on the coffee table, on the sofa. Far too many half drunk cups of tea on every available surface. An Xbox controller between the couch cushions that Michael picks up and turns over in his hands, a small smile tugging at his lips.

This is definitely one of the more interesting places he’s been. Sure, Gavin is a little annoying, but he likes Ryan and they’re definitely _entertaining_ and suddenly he feels a flash like longing. Like he wants to stay here a little bit longer, like if Ryan asks if he can stick around to answer some more questions he’d eagerly agree.

This place is _welcoming_ , and that’s something he’s missed.

He’s inspecting the old books on the shelves in the study when there’s a noise behind him and he turns. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he sees the demon leaning in the doorframe, watching him, a bottle of beer dangling from between his fingertips.

“You’re Geoff, right?” he asks - Ryan and Gavin mentioned him - and Geoff nods lazily, his eyes tracking Michael up and down before he suddenly freezes.

“And you should be _dead_ , dude,” he replies - frowning, and a chill creeps down Michael’s spine. His previous ease vanishes because he can see the way Geoff is wrinkling his nose.

He’s a creature of magic, of course he can feel just how _wrong_ Michael is, and it’s rising back up in his own stomach now, that weird off-ness.

“I am aware,” he replies drily.

Geoff takes a step towards him and Michael steps back automatically before changing his mind and folding his arms, standing his ground. Glaring up at the demon.

“Oh, man,” Geoff says, grimacing. “That’s just _wrong_ , who the fuck did this to you?”

“Some guy,” Michael replies. His heart is pounding now because stupid, stupid, _stupid_. He should never have thought that this place would be any different; of course they hate him here too.

Geoff pulls a face. “Sheezus,” he says. “There are few people in the world who’d dare to bring someone back from the dead. Dear _God_ you feel wrong. You have no idea how weird this is.”

“I think I have a fucking clue,” Michael spits. “Fuck you too, asshole.”

He shoves Geoff aside and heads for the door, hefting his backpack up over his shoulder. Fuck enchiladas, fuck this house and fuck Geoff. He hates himself for hoping this would be different, hates the fact that it _hurts_ when he should be used to it by now.

“Hey, hey!” he hears Geoff call behind him, but doesn’t stop. He’s halfway to the back door when the demon appears in front of him suddenly in a puff of blue flame, reaching to stop Michael with a hand against his chest. “Where are you going?”

“Away from here.” Michael tries to get past again but Geoff grabs his arm. “Fucking let go of me. Thought I felt _wrong_.”

“Hey, I didn’t mean it that way. Jesus, kid, you’re prickly, aren’t you?” Geoff lets go of him but doesn’t move out of the way. “Sorry, alright? You just startled me.”

Michael stops trying to get by. He folds his arms and sort of grunts. Part of him still aching to get out before anything can hurt him further.

Geoff’s face softens. “Look, I get it. People don’t like things like you. It’s not like that here.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“You’re safe here, that’s all.” He shrugs. “Look at me, hanging around. No one’s trying to exorcise _me_ out of here. Ryan and Gav literally do not give a fuck what you are as long as you’re, I don’t know. A cool guy. Are you a cool guy, whatever-your-name-is?”

Part of him wants to laugh. The rest is still bitter.

“I’m a _dead_ guy,” he replies, and Geoff rolls his eyes.

“Okay, I’m sorry, we got off to a bad start. But I’m just saying. I don’t know who you are or where you’ve been but you look like you could do with a place to stay, at least for one night.” He tilts his head. “How about it?”

Michael stares at him. Part of him’s still screaming _abort, abort_ but…

But Ryan was kind to him, and Gavin seems harmless, and despite his initial reaction Geoff isn’t looking at him now like he’s disgusted, and this house feels good. The three people living in it are already such a mixed bag that one more can’t hurt, at least for tonight.

“Michael,” he says, and Geoff blinks at him.

“My name’s Michael,” he replies, and Geoff holds out a hand that Michael shakes.

“Nice to meet you, Michael,” he says, and Michael smiles, just a bit.

He stays for dinner and then that night and then the next day, the next week, until the room he’s in becomes his room rather than the guest room. The thought of leaving crosses his mind a few times but now that he’s found a place to settle after so long he can’t quite find it in himself to give it up.

Besides, he likes it here.

He likes helping Ryan with his research. He likes it when Gavin drags him off excitedly to show him all the things they’ve filmed; Michael doesn’t hang out in the woods much so until now he’d never really seen fairies and pixies in such detail. There’s something spectacular about them.

He likes waking up in the morning and making bad coffee for everyone, and fighting with Gavin about wasting cereal. He likes drinking with them late into the night and laughing at Geoff’s shitty jokes. Helping with Ryan’s work and listening to him rave on about all these mythical creatures he’s heard of but never really seen.

It takes him a while to loosen up but after a while he tells his stories too. He’s seen history in action, he has his fair share of tales. He’s gathered more over the fifty years than he realised at the time. Stories only matter when you have someone to tell them to, after all. 

Things are good.

It’s a slow process of his walls coming down until he wakes up one morning and realises he is happier than he’s been in half a century. Until he finds himself smiling ridiculously fondly at Gavin while he’s bent over a camera and works out that somewhere along the line the human’s endeared himself to him. Ryan too. And Geoff, the only one who properly knows what he is and just how unnatural it is and yet always makes him laugh anyway; who stays up until five in the morning with him marathoning sitcoms and telling him terrible stories about the things that go on in demon-land or wherever the hell he’s from.

After a while Jack comes along and he is good too; Michael has never met a kinder soul and he readily accepts the swamp monster into their little band. And everything is fine, for a while, except Gavin still asks, sometimes, about things Michael doesn’t quite want to tell him yet. That drags up old feelings he doesn’t want to revisit, because none of them - none of them _get it_ , none of them know what it’s like to be changed in the way he’s been changed, to have your humanity stripped away like that.

Until Ray.

Michael’s out alone early one morning, walking. He does this quite often; sometimes he can’t sleep or he gets restless or he just needs his space from the others.

He’s out in the forest heading around the lake when he spots the man sitting under a tree. He looks terrible; head down, hair matted with sweat. Fists clenched and heaving huge breaths, trembling visibly.

Michael’s immediate thought is that he’s drunk.

“You alright there buddy?” he calls out; and the man’s head snaps up and that’s when Michael notices that he’s a werewolf; he’s been able to tell since he came back. There’s something in his eyes, the set of his face. The feel of him, an aura of magic that Michael’s able to pick up on.

Concern is what hits next because werewolves can be dangerous, depending on who they are, and Gavin and Ryan come out here alone a lot. With a frown he starts to approach, intent on interrogating this guy on what exactly he’s doing out here.

He barely takes a step forward before the man throws up a panicked hand.

“D-don’t come any closer!”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, it’s not a fucking threat, I…” he breaks off with a groan, squeezing his eyes shut, looking pained. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

Michael scoffs out a laugh.

“That’s not gonna be an issue here, pal.”

“No, seriously, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No, seriously, you really can’t.” He comes right up by the other’s side, crouches next to him. The guy flinches and something like concern worms in Michael’s gut. “I heal from everything.”

The man’s eyes open again. Lock on Michael’s and notice what he is. He tilts his head quizzically, seeming confused.

“What the fuck are you?”

“Reanimated corpse, undead, freakish-horror-that-should-not-exist, whatever you want to call me.” Michael rocks back on his heels and glances down the man’s body; there are claws working their way out from his knuckles and hair starting to sprout along his neck and wrists. “You about to transform?”

“Trying real fucking hard not to.” He takes a few deep breaths and after a few moments the fur recedes, the claws too.

“Sorry,” he says then, “I’m new. Hard to control it.”

Michael raises his eyebrows. “How new?”

“A month or so.”

“No pack?”

“No.” Something quick in it, quiet and small, and Michael bites his lip because suddenly it’s 1965 again and he’s alone, confused, _scared_ , unsure what he is and with no one to guide him. Thrust out to make his own way, barely understanding what he’s just been dragged into.

“I’m Michael,” he says then, and offers him a hand up. The man looks surprised that he even wants to touch him, then unexpectedly grateful.

“Ray.”

“You want to tell me how you got out here?”

Looking back on it he decided the moment the guy took his hand that he wasn’t just going to leave him out there. As it is, they wander for hours, tracking circles through the forest as Ray tells Michael an all too relatable story. Bitten by a rogue werewolf the night of a full moon. Transformed before he even knew what the fuck was going on. Living interstate away from his family, too ashamed to go back to them and have them see what happened. Unsure of what he is and unable to control what he can do. So he wanders, and wanders, trying to sort his shit out as he goes.

Michael can relate far too well and he’s telling Ray his own story before he knows it. They click ridiculously fast and Michael doesn’t think twice before inviting him back to the house, back to the others - Ray is wary at first, especially of the humans living there, but Michael knows Geoff can protect Ryan and Gavin from anything; he’s by far powerful enough, and it only takes the offer of free food and Xbox for Ray to perk up and agree to come along.

And so their six is complete.

Ray is the missing piece Michael has been waiting for; someone like him, someone who was _made_. He latches onto that connection perhaps embarrassingly fast but Ray seems just as grateful to have someone who understands - let alone free food and board in exchange for answering a few questions and letting Ryan take some samples from him.

They bond quickly.

Ray is wary of the others at first and Michael tries to coax him out of his shell a bit but it’s hard. He knows it will come with time.

“I like it here,” Ray admits one night, a few weeks in. They’re sitting in Michael’s room as they usually do at night. With the door shut, in the dark, the faint trill of frogs and cicadas a soothing background melody, it’s a peaceful enough environment that Ray’s in no danger of triggering a shift.

“I’m glad,” Michael says.

“The others are all… I don’t know. It’s nice.”

Michael shifts against the wall to face him.

“Before I got here,” he says. “I literally walked for years. Just… just going from place to place. No purpose, nothing. All I knew was that I was stuck here forever and somehow knowing that just, like, drained me of all my fucking motivation or whatever. But then I met these guys and… it sounds sappy as shit but it’s different here with them. I avoided making friends for ages because I was scared of losing them eventually, but… this is different. I don’t know. They look at me different and I don’t worry about the future, I just have the for-now. I think we need that. You too. The for-now.”

Ray nods. It’s easy to admit stuff to him, especially here in the dark.

They sit in companionable silence and after a while Ray speaks again.

“Does Gavin hate me?”

Michael chokes on his own spit. “What the fuck, dude.”

“I don’t know, has he said anything about it?”

“No?” It’s true they haven’t exactly gotten on well, but that’s mostly a case of ignoring each other. Ray tends to avoid Gavin out of sheer fear of hurting him somehow; Michael can’t really blame him for that. The shifts are still sporadic, Gavin’s got a master’s degree in triggering emotional responses in people (mostly by virtue of annoying them) and along with being human he’s a scrawny little fuck who looks like a strong breeze could do him over, let alone a fully transformed werewolf. 

“He doesn’t hate you,” Michael replies, but it’s hard to know what goes through Gavin’s head and Michael realises that he doesn’t know _what_ the other man thinks of Ray, only that Gavin doesn’t really tend to hate things, so he can only assume the best. “He just needs to get used to you, probably.”

“Okay,” Ray says, dubiously.

Except things go a bit downhill after that; Gavin starts pulling away and hanging out with Ryan more and Michael’s can’t help the hurt he feels at that. He knows he’s been spending more time with Ray lately but he can’t help it. The other man needs him - needs this connection they’ve forged because the one thing he’s learned is that it is _shit_ coming to terms with the things that’ve happened to them, and it’s even worse when you do it alone.

And the thing is, Michael’s love for Gavin is a bright flaring thing; even back before they were properly friends the other man never invoked anything other than a passionate response from him. With Gavin it’s all high-running emotions. Affection or annoyance or _fondness_. Gavin’s funny and lets most things slide off his back and Michael likes that. And when Gavin starts ignoring him it hurts, deep inside, because he didn’t quite realise just how much he needed that easy camaraderie in his life.

But with Ray it’s a slow yet exponentially increasing burn; they click instantly but then his feelings for the other man build up and up. A trust that grows with every late-night conversation and past-midnight admission. With every time Ray flees the house to transform out on the moor and Michael runs after him. Chases him and calms him down and sometimes sits with him out under the moon, his hands in Ray’s fur gently stroking. Ray’s never once hurt him no matter how scared he is; he’s come close a few times but somehow he always manages to pull himself back and Michael doesn’t need words to let him know how proud of him he is for that.

One day he’s out on his early morning walk and he sees a rose bush and the stupid thought pops into his head that hey, flowers are nice, maybe flowers will make Ray happy, and he picks a bunch of red roses and is knocking at Ray’s door to give them to him before he even really thinks about it.

Sleep-addled, hair tousled in a way that really should not be quite so adorable, Ray looks down at the flowers and then up at Michael and then down at the flowers again and says, emphatically, “ _Dude_.”

“Yeah?” Michael asks.

“Dude,” Ray repeats, and nods down at the bouquet. “Roses? Really?”

It’s then that it hits Michael what this looks like, and his face turns as red as the flowers.

“Oh - fuck - I didn’t - these aren’t - shit, I didn’t even think about it. Like, _flowers_ , everyone likes flowers, this isn’t… these are totally just bro flowers, man. This is a broquet.”

Ray bursts out laughing at that, and shakes his head as he takes the flowers and heads off to find a vase. And Michael’s face is still burning but he laughs it off as well. That is a good day, a day when Ray does not have any frights or slip ups. And the next day Gavin, who has been avoiding him, mends things with him, and by the next week all three of them are hanging out together because Michael pushes more of an effort to include Gavin in their activities, be it Xbox or walks or whatnot, and things are even better after that, the three of them together, because Michael really does like both of them a lot and he’s getting closer to the gents by the day as well, as he nudges Ray to get to know them more.

—

He wakes up one morning to a knock at his door, but when he opens it there’s no one there. Just a bunch of winter roses lying on the floor outside and he picks them up with a grin. It’s Ray, it has to be, paying him back all these weeks later. He isn’t sure why now, but it makes him smile anyway - a smile that’s perhaps a little too soft, too fond.

It’s easy to play it off as a stupid in-joke of theirs but while he’s putting the flowers in water the fortune teller’s prophecy comes back and hits him like a freight train. Stops him in his tracks.

There’s six of them and it’s too perfect, it fits too _perfectly_. He stares at the flowers and thinks of Ray except it’s not one, it’s _six_ , that’s what she said. 

If he even believes it.

He closes his eyes and breathes deeply and thinks. Thinks about how Gavin and Ryan have been quite obviously smitten with each other for a while now, even if they’re both too chicken to make a move. And how Geoff and Jack spend a lot of time together, but Gavin spends a lot of time with Geoff as well. And Gavin kissed Geoff the other day - they were wrestling and Geoff had him pinned and he was trying to shock him into letting him go, but his face was flushed afterwards and-

And Gavin’s kissed him too, sloppily on the cheek and usually while he’s drunk and Michael loves him, yes, but he’s not sure if it’s in that way or not. _Does_ know that Gavin is important to him, really, really fucking important - they all are, all five of them.

_And Ray?_

Ray who’s given him flowers the way Michael gave him flowers all those weeks back, Ray who he’s gotten so close to so quickly.

His heart is beating fast now and it’s weird because sometimes it doesn’t beat, sometimes it just sits in his chest dead and other times it kicks into action like it is now. His pulse racing along with his mind as his imagination flicks over possibility after possibility.

_It could mean nothing. Fortune tellers can be wrong. All six of us, after all?_

It seems impossible, at least right now, and he thinks on it only a little more before deciding, fuck it, if it happens it will happen. He’s getting better at that, at letting things go. At focusing on the for-now. It kind of helps that Ray’s gotten into the obnoxious habit of yelling “YOLO” at everyone and everything.

He lets it go, but it’s still _there_ , a vague possibility at the back of his mind.

He thinks of it now and then, when he watches Jack and Ryan laughing over something in the morning paper, or Geoff playing Xbox with Ray at three in the morning, or catches himself trying to work out how many colours are in Gavin’s eyes. He thinks of the six of them in this house and how when it comes down to it they’re stupidly, ridiculously happy, aren’t they? And it’s only a matter of time before Gavin and Ryan get together, after all, and maybe things will happen after that. Who knows. There’s time. There’s a _future_ there, for them, when winter ends.

—

And then, of course, Gavin goes and gets himself killed.

—

—

—

The light turns on in the corridor and Michael squints, throwing a hand up to shield his eyes against the sudden brightness.

Ray comes up the stairs and into the hall. He hasn’t seen Michael; the window box is cast into shadow at this angle. Rather, he heads straight for Gavin’s door and knocks gently.

“Gav? Can we talk?”

There’s no answer.

“I know you’re in there. Jack said you said you’d talk with me. Can I come in?”

Still no response.

Even from here Michael can see the uncertainty flicker over Ray’s face. He reaches out and tries the handle to find it locked. Lingers awkwardly for a moment before turning and trailing away, back downstairs.

With effort he rises himself and heads towards his room. He stops outside Gavin’s door and pauses for a moment.

They don’t lock the doors, normally. They all respect each other’s privacy enough to usually not barge in if they’re just closed. But nothing has been as usual lately, and he turns away and goes back into his own bedroom.

—

He hears Ray knocking again, later that night.

“Gavin, please let me in.”

“Come on, at least say something.”

“Dude, at least let me know you’re alright in there.”

“Just knock back on the door or something.”

“Gavin?”

“Gavin?”

“Hey Gav, please tell me you’re still alive?”

Michael can hear him growing steadily more concerned and he can do nothing but stand, frozen, ear pressed to his own door, shut inside his room. Coward fear crawling deep inside his gut for all the ways in which he’s not helping.

But he _can’t_.

He tries to sleep that night and is plagued by terrible dreams. The house burning down and all the others dying with it. Himself, wandering alone again. Years spent walking and walking until he’s ground himself into the dust and even then resurrecting in perfect condition only to walk some more. Always alone.

He wakes in a cold sweat, disoriented, to the sound of someone knocking and knocking at his door. His head is pounding and his heart is too, nausea a dull ache in the pit of his stomach. Feeling like shit he clambers out of bed, stumbling a little, still trying to reorient himself, and pulls open the door.

Ray’s standing outside, face drawn in concern. It intensifies when his eyes fall on Michael and he wonders just how terrible he must look.

“Hey,” Ray says. He glances over his shoulder at the room across the hall. “Um, Gavin won’t talk to me or let me in his room.”

“Yeah, I heard your multiple attempts,” he replies, and Ray’s brows furrow a little. He motions like he wants to come inside and Michael lets him. Moves tiredly aside and shuts the door behind him. They sit on the bed next to each other, backs to the wall, the way they have a hundred times before. It feels different now.

“I thought he might come out if he heard _you_ ,” Ray says then. “Will you help me?”

Michael doesn’t reply. He stares down at his knees and bites his lip. Beside him Ray lets out a little exhale of breath.

“Michael,” he says quietly. “You’re his best friend. He needs you.”

“I can’t, Ray,” Michael replies.

“Why not?” Ray asks. “Swear to God, Michael, if you’re letting your resentment over what Ryan did start affecting how you treat Gav - this isn’t Gavin’s _fault_ , this-”

“I know,” Michael snaps, rounding on him. “I fucking know, it’s not that, okay? It’s just…” he clenches his fists and he’s shaking, now, “I _can’t_ , Ray, it’s… it’s bringing it all up for me again, it’s just so _wrong_ , I can’t… I can’t bear to look at him. This shouldn’t have happened, not to Gavin, not to-”

He breaks off with a choked noise as Ray surges forward suddenly and yanks him into a hug. It’s unexpected, and Ray usually doesn’t touch people, not like that, not this closely, but Michael falls into the embrace. Hugs him back tightly and buries his face in his shoulder because Ray gets it, more than anyone probably.

But Ray pulls back too soon, and says, “He needs you like I needed you, come on.”

Michael shakes his head again, suddenly annoyed at his pushing. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? I _can’t_.”

“Why not?” Ray asks. “You did it for me didn’t you? It’s not… this isn’t the end of the world, Michael. It sucks now but it sucked for us too when it happened to us, and we… we were _fine_. We _are_ fine, here. It’s been what, a few weeks? What about in a few months, a few years. Things won’t be like this forever.”

“It’s different,” Michael says. It sounds like an excuse. “It’s _Gavin_ , it wasn’t meant to happen to _him_.”

“It’s not different at all,” Ray says. He sounds disappointed and it’s like a knife in the gut. Michael can take it from Ryan, sort of, but not Ray.

He gets up and leaves the room and part of Michael wants to reach out after him but he doesn’t. He sits there and hugs his knees and hates himself. _Coward, coward_. 

—

He hears Ray calling to Gavin throughout the day. By the time afternoon falls there is still no response. Michael doesn’t want to leave his room.

Later he hears footsteps coming up the stairs. He opens the door a crack and watches as Ray goes back over to Gavin’s door. This time all of the others are with him; even Ryan and Geoff, it seems, having overcome their animosity in light of this new concern.

“Gavin?” Jack asks, rapping on the door. “Can we come in?”

By now the lack of an answer is expected.

Ray sighs, scuffing his foot against the floor. “See? I’ve been knocking all day and basically all yesterday too.”

“Ryan?” Jack prompts, turning to him. “Is it possible something’s happened? That the… the heart has worn off or…”

Ryan shakes his head. “No - he should be fine. I‘ve been checking up on him and there’s no reason anything would go wrong.”

Geoff clenches his fists and blue fire flares around his hands. “I can break this down.”

“Don’t.” Jack stops him with a hand to the chest. They all turn to look at him and the swamp monster stares back at them. “Look, he… he obviously wants to be left alone. Maybe we should give him some space.”

“Some of us have been giving him more than enough damn space,” Ryan says, with a very pointed look in Geoff’s direction.

“What I mean is,” Jack cuts in, before a fight can break out, “Pushing ourselves on him probably isn’t the best thing right now. Let him… let him have time to himself for a bit, if that’s what he wants. I don’t know. Maybe it will help.”

After a minute they all nod, and Geoff leans in and knocks gently on the door again.

“Gav? We’re all out here if you need something, okay? Just… please come out soon.”

Again, that terrible silence. Geoff turns away, eyes downcast, and Jack puts a hand on his shoulder as they head off towards the stairs.

Ray and Ryan are left alone, both of them staring at the closed door.

“You really think it’s best to just leave him?” Ray asks, and after a minute Ryan shakes his head.

“Not really. You know Gavin. Leaving him to stew in his thoughts isn’t great. But that’s… that’s just what I think.” He sighs, runs his hands through his hair. “And I’ve fucked up enough lately that I probably shouldn’t be trusting my judgement, so… let’s go with Jack’s idea for now.”

Ray bites his lip, but doesn’t say anything. He reaches out and squeezes Ryan’s shoulder before heading off downstairs as well.

Michael feels like he should shut the door and go back into his own room, but for some reason he can’t bring himself to move. Stands transfixed, voyeuristic as he watches Ryan lean forward and rest his forehead against Gavin’s closed door, letting out a long breath. After a minute he turns and slides down to sit on the floor.

“Gavin,” he calls out, quietly. “I’m… sorry, okay, I know this hasn’t been easy and… maybe I messed up, maybe I shouldn’t have… I don’t know. But whatever’s wrong we can fix it - _I_ can fix it - or I can at least try, just… please come out. Please let me help you.”

For some reason Michael almost thinks it will work, that maybe Ryan alone can coax him out. But there is nothing, and after a long moment Ryan reaches up and rubs his hands over his face.

“Or not,” he hears him mutter, “Maybe I can’t help. Maybe I never could.”

He stands with a sigh looking older and more tired than Michael has ever seen him. And doesn’t go back to the lab but rather down the hall towards his own room; Michael’s rarely known him to go in there for any long period of time. He’s always falling asleep in the lounge or the lab anyway.

Michael closes his door slowly. He retreats to his bed and pulls the covers over his head. Closes his eyes.

 _Things won’t be like this forever_ , Ray said, and he knows it’s true - knows something will happen _eventually_ \- but right now he can’t think of a future beyond what’s happening now, the dull emptiness he feels, and it’s like he’s wandering lost all over again.

—

He doesn’t leave his room for a while after that.

Eventually he sleeps. He dreams that he wakes up and realises he’s slept for years and years and the others have all passed away and it’s just him, now, trapped here immortal. He leaves his room and there’s nothing but cobwebs and dust in the corridor and he knows, somehow, that the others are gone, that the only thing left of them is ghosts and Geoff has disappeared back to hell as well. 

All of them but Gavin.

Somehow in the dream he knows that Gavin is still in his room, because like Michael he won’t die, not unless someone actively kills him, and he’s been in there all these years as well.

A terrible loneliness overtakes Michael then and he beats frantically on the door. Pulls fruitlessly at the handle willing it to unlock, to open.

“Gavin.” He tries to scream it but his voice won’t come out in anything other than a whisper. “Gavin, please, you have to come out, it’s just you and me now. It’s just you and me. The others are all gone, _please_ come out, I can’t - I can’t fucking be alone, please, _please_.”

The house is silent around him and suddenly he is afraid, so afraid of being alone, and he sinks to the ground and curls up and wonders how long he will be sitting here, if he will become a ghost in the house as well.

And then there’s a noise. A soft step behind the door, the click of the lock, a creak of hinges as it slowly starts to open-

Michael wakes up with a start to the sound of his bedroom door opening. He’s stifled by something, realises he’s still underneath his bedcovers and struggles to get out of them. For a moment he is confused and disoriented and thinks he’s still in the dream and he calls out, confused, “Gavin?”

“No, it’s me.” It’s Ray’s voice.

Michael blinks a few times. It’s very dark in the room as he flings the covers back - dark and cold - and he glances at his alarm clock and realises with a frown that it’s quite late at night. He must have slept the afternoon away.

“Fuck,” he says, rubbing his eyes, “I didn’t mean to sleep that long.”

Ray comes up by the bed. Switches on the lamp and stares down at him. He looks tired.

“Michael, do you know how long you’ve been in here?”

“A couple of hours?”

“No, over a _day_.”

“What the fuck?” He looks at the clock again and realises with a start that it’s night time the day _after_ the last time he opened his door. And then curses a few times. Realises he has a slight headache, that he feels dehydrated and a little hungry even if he technically doesn’t need food.

“Shit. I just… lost track of time I guess.” He runs his hands through his hair, grimaces a bit at the feel of it. It needs a wash.

Ray stares down at him impassively. 

“That happens when you lock yourself in your room,” he says, and then grabs Michael’s wrist, tugging at him. “Come on.”

“Wait, what?” Michael protests as he’s dragged out of the bed. He stumbles in Ray’s grip as he’s pulled towards the door. “Ray, what... where are we going?”

“Down to the lab.”

“What - _why_?”

“Because it’s high fucking time you and Ryan mended your differences.”

“ _What_?” Michael tries to pull away but Ray is surprisingly strong and already has him halfway down the stairs. “Ray, what, I-”

“Just come on, dude, I’m sick of this.” They reach the ground floor and Ray starts to pull him down towards the lab but Michael resists, digging his heels in.

“Ray.” His voice comes out broken, pleading. He’s still half asleep, throat dry and head pounding. His heart’s beating too fast, too nervous. “Ray, I-”

“Come on, Michael.” Ray puts his hands on his shoulders, grips tight. Looks him in the eyes and says, “We’re not getting anywhere. This has to end. I know it’s hard but what’s happened has happened so we have to deal with it now, okay?”

Michael doesn’t answer but he also doesn’t resist when Ray takes his arm again and pulls him downstairs.

The lab door is unlocked and when they open it and step inside Ryan jumps from where he was sitting, staring at a book. Michael’s pretty sure he wasn’t actually reading it. He whips around and Michael sees the disappointment flash across his face when he registers who they are. Knows he was hoping for Gavin.

Ray drops Michael’s wrist and steps forward, looking between them.

“You two,” he says, “Need to sort yourselves out. I get it, okay, Michael, you have good reason to be pissed for what Ryan did but you also need to get your head out of your ass and realise that sulking about it isn’t gonna help anyone. Ryan, I know you know that this hasn’t all been sunshine and daisies and that there’s a reason the others were mad, so just drop the martyr act for a little while, okay? Gavin…” he trails off, voice breaking a little, then soldiers on.

“Gavin’s still not coming out and… and I think part of it’s because of how fucked up everyone else in the house has been. We’re trying but it’s not the same with you guys fighting, so just… just sort yourselves out so that when we finally get him out he sees that everything can be okay? Like, it’s shit that this has happened but the fact that you’re fighting over _him_ is probably making him think it’s his fault so…” he trails off then, seemingly out of words.

“So just sort it out, okay?”

He heads for the door without waiting for their acknowledgement, shutting it behind them, and Michael stands there feeling suddenly awkward, arms stiff by his sides. Ryan looks just as uncomfortable, but after a minute he clears his throat.

“Sit down?” he asks, quietly, and Michael nods. He sinks into a chair and Ryan does too and for a moment they just look at each other.

Honestly, Michael is too drained to be angry at this point. The dream hangs over him because despite how mad he’s been at Ryan for the last few days he still cares about him, deeply, and the thought of him _gone_ strikes something in him. He bites his lip, swallowing down how upset he feels, and after a moment Ryan sighs.

“If there’s… if there’s something you want to say you can go first.”

Michael shakes his head.

“There’s nothing I want to say,” he replies. And it’s true; he’s said it all already, all the things he didn’t really mean. He knows Ryan gets it by now. Doesn’t know where this is going to go.

But Ryan just nods.

“Okay then,” he says. “Okay. I guess it’s my turn then.”

He runs his hands over his face and for the first time - and not just since Gavin came back but since he _died_ \- he looks defeated.

“I thought I could fix all this. I thought that I’d bring him back and you’d all be happy and we’d go back to normal. And sure, I thought he might find it hard to adjust but I didn’t… I didn’t expect that we’d all… that we’d all get like this. Perhaps it was naive of me.”

Michael bites his lip.

“I underestimated what something like this would do to him,” Ryan continues. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe it was selfish of me, maybe I did do this for me because… because you’re right, I missed him, I couldn’t… I couldn’t imagine at least not _trying_ , not when I knew I _could_ get him back. But Michael… Michael, when you first arrived here you were… not as bad as how Gavin is now but close to it. And before he died we were all _happy_ , we were all _fine_ , and you keep talking about how bad it is but… but you did recover, with us, and that’s possible for Gavin too.”

Michael can’t meet his eyes. He hears the truth in the words. And Ryan’s always been the only one who _knows_ , the only one he ever told all the grisly details to, albeit in a cold way, a clinical way. Even with Ray he spared him a couple of the worse parts, even with Gavin. But Ryan knows and something about him knowing has always helped Michael, in a way. Settled him a bit.

“I know I’m shit with this... stuff,” Ryan adds then, something unexpectedly vulnerable in his face, “And it’s… it’s not the same but. Here, in this house, with you guys, it’s been different for me. I don’t want to lose you, _any_ of you. And I couldn’t lose Gavin and I… I still think this can work. I still _hope_ this can work.”

Michael stares at the lab bench in front of him. There’s a lump in his throat and part of him wants to cry and he hates himself for it, for how much all this is affecting him and hitting way too deep but when it comes down to things he just _misses_ them all. He misses how they were before. He misses Ryan and his clever jokes and watching him enthuse over everything they found out in the forest. He misses seeing Geoff smile and laugh. He misses the ease between them all in the house.

He misses Gavin and even if he’s never going to be the same again, Michael knows, knows because it’s happened to him that he can still get better, that he can come back from this even if it is different.

And Gavin’s hurting, _now_ , and Michael hasn’t helped him and it’s going to be hard - it’s going to be hard to face up to things and to have to rehash everything that happened to him to help Gavin through it now, but that’s what friends do, that’s what you do for someone you...

“Okay,” he says. It comes out a croak and he clears his throat, tries again. “Okay.”

Ryan looks stupidly, innocently uncertain for a moment. “What does ‘okay’ mean?”

“It means fine. Bury the hatchet. I… I’ve been an ass, kind of. You were still a fucking idiot for doing this but you’ve done it now and you’re right. He’s back. We gotta help him.” He breathes out, shakily. “ _I_ gotta help him.”

“Michael…”

“It’s fine, Ryan.” He smiles a bit, something wistful in it. “When I first got here, you were… you cared. That’s more than anyone did for a long time. And I haven’t forgotten it, and I know you care about Gav. I know you never meant to hurt him. And I’ve fucked up now and I hurt him too, so. Guess that’s on both of us.”

He doesn’t expect Ryan to reach out, but he does. Rises from his chair and crosses the room and reaches out. There’s something stiff and awkward in his movements and Michael knows he doesn’t do this much, reach out to people, in his own awkward way, and he appreciates the motion all the more for that. Lets Ryan pull him into a hug and hugs him right back and he’s scared, God he’s scared, but he thinks _okay_ and _this is fine_ and even pain is only for-now, and he has a future, he has a _future_ and Gavin does too. They’ll work on it.

—

“I think we need to take a different approach.”

Michael glances over at Ray and nods agreement. Another day has passed and things have changed, a little bit at least. Between the five of them out here in the house things have relaxed; they all ate together last night for the first time in a long time and they didn’t talk about Gavin. There was the occasional awkward silence, the occasional glance at the empty seat at the table, but they tried to keep a conversation up and things were better, things were _fine_ , and that fuelled Michael a little, made him see that things could go back to how they were.

But another day has passed and Gavin still has not emerged; Michael felt nervous before, when he finally came up outside the other’s door and knocked and called out. But it’s been three hours now, and Gavin hasn’t responded, and the others have all gone out, driving out to a nearby town to pick up lunch in the hope that food will coax him out, or at least the quiet house.

“What constitutes a different approach?” Michael asks, and Ray shrugs.

“Just... make things normal? So far it’s been all _oooh, Gavin, we’re here for you, we’re worried_ , but what if we, I don’t know, show that things are getting better out here and that might make him feel better?”

Michael thinks about it, then nods. It’s worth a shot at least.

So that’s how they end up sitting right outside the door very noisily playing Mario Kart on their DS’s. It’s good to unwind, actually, good to forget a little and Michael needs that, that distraction. It pulls him back towards when things were good and fine.

“Oh you _bitch_ ,” he gasps, as Ray blue-shells him. “Fuck you, Ray.”

“Can’t stop Waluigi,” Ray crows back, and then, “Oh fucking _shit_ I just stepped on my own banana.”

Michael breaks down laughing, something a little hysterical in it. It feels like it’s been too long since he had _fun_ , and he looks over at Ray and sees him smiling and thinks it’s been too long since he saw that either, and something very fond wells up in him.

“Gavin,” he calls out, “He’s kicking my ass out here. Come out and be on my team, dude.”

“Yes Gavin,” Ray adds, “Please come out and be on Michael’s team because that is a fucking _handicap_ man.”

“Shut up, Ray, come on, we’re trying to make him feel _better_ here.” There’s something light in it, though, teasing, because walking on eggshells around Gav sure as fuck didn’t help before.

“Sorry. The truth hurts.”

The race ends and Michael lowers his console and then sighs, thudding his head back against the wall. There’s still zero response from behind the door.

“Yeah, this isn’t working,” he says, turning to Ray. He can’t quite hide his disappointment and Ray can’t either.

The werewolf sighs, though. Gets up and paces a bit. Then, after a moment, walks up to Gavin’s door, presses his hands to it. He lowers his head and breathes heavily for a few minutes and Michael bites his lip. Braces himself for the heartfelt speech that he himself hasn’t managed to give yet because he doesn’t want it to be through the door; he wants to talk to Gavin face to face so he’s been waiting.

But Ray sucks in a deep breath, leans in close to the door, and then belts out at the top of his lungs, “ _Do you wanna build a snowman?”_

Michael chokes on his own spit, has a coughing fit and nearly suffocates then and there on the floor; Ray breaks down in hysterics himself and turns to him with the stupidest, goofiest grin. And it’s terrible, and none of this is helping the situation at all, but fuck it’s good to laugh again, fuck it’s good to see Ray making stupid jokes and Michael wishes, wishes, _wishes_ he only knew what was going on the other side of that door, if Gavin heard, if it made him smile even a little bit, and that thought sobers him slightly.

“Oh man,” he says, “I’m starting to think Geoff maybe _should_ bust in there.” His smile fades a little. “He hasn’t eaten in a couple days.”

Ray bites his lip.

“There’s always the window,” he proffers, and Michael raises his eyebrows. And then thinks about it, and hey, that might actually work.

“You know,” he says, “That might actually be an idea.”

They go outside and round the side of the house, and it takes them an embarrassingly long time to work out which window is actually Gavin’s because for some reason all counting skills immediately flee their brains as soon as they’re looking at the second storey from an outside angle, but they work it out eventually.

Michael pulls a face. It’s high up; it’s on the second floor and the outside of the house is just smooth brick. There’s a drainpipe up by Gavin’s window that might work, but it looks rickety as all hell.

“Aren’t werewolves meant to be, like, super agile and shit,” he says.

Ray snorts. “Where are you getting that? Fucking Teen Wolf? Look at me, man, I’m unfit as fuck.”

“So I’m guessing you’re volunteering me for this then.”

“Well, you are the one who’ll recover if you fall and break your neck.”

Michael is silent and Ray grimaces a bit, reaching out to poke his arm.

“Sorry. Too soon?”

“No,” Michael replies, shooting him a half smile. “Just trying to work out how I’ll actually go about this.”

He’s not exactly the fittest guy in the world either, but the drain pipe has a wall on either side and he thinks he can maybe make it up. Sighing, he rolls up the sleeves of his jacket, says “Fuck my life,” and gets to it.

Climbing is hard.

Climbing is fucking hard and it sucks but he does it anyway; his arms are burning and he scrapes his hands on the brickwork but he keeps going. And going and going until suddenly he looks down and realises, oh shit, I’m quite a way off the ground aren’t I. And he’s never been scared of heights but God damn he is high up.

“Keep going, you’re almost there!” Ray calls out.

Michael grits his teeth. Forces his burning arm muscles to pull him farther up. He sees Gavin’s window a little way away; there’s a sill protruding out a bit. He’ll have to swing across to it.

“This looks so much easier in Assassin’s Creed,” he calls down, and hears Ray snort below him.

“Yeah, well, just channel that inner Ezio,” he says.

“Fuck my life,” Michael says again, and lunges for it.

He falls.

His fingers barely grasp the window sill before he loses his grip and slips. He doesn’t even have time to scream before he’s falling, falling, a sick lurch in his stomach as the ground rushes up and then blackness.

—

—

—

Everything hurts after Gavin dies.

Michael goes to his room and closes the door and pulls the blinds down and sits in darkness for an entire day, all light shut out of the room because the light hurts; it stings his eyes and burns his skin like he’s turned into a vampire and the dark is cool, the dark is soothing except it’s not because everything _hurts_.

An actual, physical pain that consumes him as he sits on the bed and curls up as tight as he can get and rocks back and forth because _no, no, not Gavin, not Gavin_ -

_Can’t be dead, can’t be dead-_

His heart is pounding pounding pounding and he _hates it_ , he hates it and it’s mocking him with every beat because-

_Should be me, should be me-_

For a while he can’t believe it. Can’t actually get it through it head except it’s true, it’s really, devastatingly true and he doesn’t want to see the body, doesn’t want to see the proof but he can’t deny it even to himself and-

And he’s feared this all along, oh God how he has feared it. He does this, he outlives _everything_ and he knew one day these fucking fragile humans would come to an end but not this soon, not this _soon_ and he hates himself for managing to forget because it hurts so much more now, it hurts because the shell he’d built up around himself has slipped away with every time he laughed with Gavin, drank with Gavin, sat with Gavin-

_He’s gone._

He’s gone and his absence is a deep hollow ache in Michael’s stomach. It’s the darkness of his room stretching out around him, a black void and-

 _It can’t be? The prophecy_?

It is the worst time for the fortune teller’s words to swim into his mind, _five of them_ , and it was _them it was them it was fucking them_ except now, now Gavin’s not here and surely that can’t have been it, surely he can’t have had it and passed it already without even _realising_ because _nothing happened_ , maybe he wasted this like he’s wasted everything else and-

 _Gavin’s gone_.

Ryan comes and goes. Jack knocks and leaves. He considers letting Ray in but if the other man is as wrecked as Michael feels now he knows there’s nothing they can do to comfort each other-

Gavin is gone and it should be him, it should be _him_ because he would come back and-

And-

And it hurts because he should have gone out with him. Alone out there in the dark of course he was going to die. Gavin is smart and funny and creative and none of those things are enough to protect his fragile human flesh. They _never_ let him go out alone, not in the night and not in the dark and certainly not during winter. Geoff goes with him or Michael goes because things are scared of Michael, animals and beasts turn away from his unnatural gaze, cowed by what they know he is but cannot fully understand, he protects Gavin with a stare except _he wasn’t there._

He wasn’t there and Gavin died alone and now he is gone.

—

He beats his pain out on the walls of his room and screams and screams until his throat is raw and his fists are bloody.

Then he leaves. Then he finally leaves. He goes out into the living room and there is no sign of Ryan. Jack is crumpled in the corner like a wilted plant in a moment of weakness that he doesn’t think anyone else will ever witness from him, because when he notices Michael he’s straight up on his feet and reaching out but Michael waves him off.

Needs to get out right now.

It is bright in the forest. The sky is white and the ground is glistening with wet. He follows the noises of destruction until he finds Geoff, blasting trees to cinders every which way. Michael’s brought an axe from the house and he joins in, hacks away at thick trunks and snaps branches and just destroys, destroys until his arms are burning and his eyes are burning and there are fat tears rolling down his cheeks and finally his heart can’t take it and he sinks to the ground, his limbs loose and shaking.

Geoff stops next to him. He smells like thick smoke and charcoal and Michael can feel the heat radiating from him even with the inches of distance between them.

“It hurts,” Michael chokes out, and Geoff just nods. Michael can’t see him properly for his eyes swimming with tears.

“I know, buddy,” he says, and his voice is very listless and he half-heartedly destroys another tree.

Something shoots through Michael then, some surge like relief at the sight of it disappearing into dust and ash.

“Kill me,” he says.

Geoff whirls on him.

“What?”

“Kill me,” Michael repeats, and nods towards the tree. “Do me too, I’ll come back.”

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ Michael. _No_.”

“Please,” he says, and he’s begging now, “Please, it will hurt less.”

Geoff is staring at him with eyes wide in horrified concern and Michael nearly breaks under the weight of his pity. He is a mess, he knows, he’s cold and shivering and his face is drenched with tears and mucus and he doesn’t fucking care except he knows being obliterated will remove the pain for the seconds or minutes or hours that it will take him to come back.

Geoff reaches towards him and he flinches, bracing himself, but it’s warm arms that grab him and yank him to his feet, pulling him into a broad chest. Geoff squeezes him so hard it _hurts_ and Michael drinks it in, soaks in the cathartic pain and squeezes him back tightly in turn. He feels his flesh burn a little everywhere it touches Geoff and can’t bring himself to care.

—

Jack reaches out to him the minute they see one another and Michael knows Geoff spilled his guts to him, but he shakes the swamp monster off. He stays in his room and sometimes he goes to the kitchen for water and he smashes three glasses against the wall and cuts his hands to pieces cleaning up the broken bits. And then watches the cuts heal, blood congealing and flesh knitting itself back together before his eyes and _it should have been me_.

He returns to his room, always. After a while the door opens and Ray comes in. He doesn’t say a word but comes under the blankets with Michael and curls up next to him, head on his shoulder, arms tight around his waist. Michael buries his face in the other’s hair and shakes and holds onto him like he’s scared he’s going to go too.

He thinks about before, and the flowers, and how he knew they were all important to him but he wasn’t sure about anyone except Ray, Ray with the flowers and how he knew he loved him, knew that could be something.

With Gavin gone now the empty ache only shows that they had something too. They had something and Michael needed him, needed him, _needs him_ -

—

—

—

Michael wakes to cold fingers stroking his forehead. The quiet murmur of voices above him that he can’t quite make out. His head is swimming. He feels vaguely sick. Everything aches.

For a moment he doesn’t know where he is. Then he registers the couch under his back with its stupid cushions that have lost their spring, the water-stained living room ceiling above him and-

And-

And Gavin. Gavin is leaning over him and for a moment Michael thinks he is dreaming. But Gavin touches him again, fingers running down the side of his face, and it hits him with a lurch that _this is real-_

“Gav!” He sits up too fast and everything spins.

“Whoah, whoah!” Ray materialises out of somewhere beside him, catching him around the shoulders. “Careful now.”

“Gavin,” Michael says again, reaching for him. “Gavin, you’re out of your room.”

“No, Michael, I’ve astral projected myself into the lounge,” Gavin says, rolling his eyes. He looks tired, drained and a little sunken like he hasn’t been sleeping, but the relief at him joking hits Michael like a train and he lets out a very embarrassing sort of sob because he’s _missed this_ , oh God he’s missed him, and something uncomfortable twists in Gavin’s face.

Michael notices the stitches then, crossing the other’s face, but he forces himself not to turn away and he knows, he knows if he stares long enough he’ll get used to them and he needs to. He needs to because it took him long enough to get used to his own eyes without people he cared about glancing away like he disgusted them, and Gavin has nothing to be ashamed of here.

He must look very upset, because then Gavin looks very upset, and Ray in turn, and they all sit there sort of staring at one another in a thick, upset silence.

“Single manly tear,” Ray says finally, breaking it as he slides a finger down his cheek, and Gavin sort of snorts.

“Michael,” he says, turning to him, “How do you feel?”

“Like I got hit by a car; what happened? Did I die?”

“No, you fucking fell from the second floor and knocked yourself out. I was like, oh shit, what do I do? Especially because you weren’t dead,” Ray muses. “I will admit the thought crossed my mind to actually kill you so you’d just wake up fully healed-”

“That would have worked,” Michael cuts in, with an amused sort of hum, “Class A idea, why didn’t you?”

“-but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I dragged you in and ran up to Gavin’s door and yelled at him that you were very badly injured and I needed help, and once I’d convinced him that I was not pranking him to get him to come out, he came to assist me.”

“I _think_ we relocated your shoulder right,” Gavin says, and Michael looks down and realises it’s in a sling. He moves it experimentally; it aches but everything heals quickly with him. He’s bruised but the worst of it has probably taken care of itself while he was unconscious, and he nods.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I heal fast even when I’m not dead.” He stretches a little and winces and Gavin hands him something - a painkiller, he realises, and a glass of water - and he takes them gratefully.

More silence as he swallows it down. After a moment Gavin makes an aborted gesture towards the door and Michael’s head swivels towards him in alarm.

“I might be injured, but swear to God if you so much as try to get back into your room I will rugby tackle you to the floor.”

Gavin barks out a startled laugh.

“I, uh, okay,” he says, and sinks down into a chair, looking very uncomfortable. Michael’s mouth twists and he exchanges a glance with Ray; they didn’t exactly discuss what they’d do if he _did_ come out, and at this point it’s either go for the heartfelt talks or start singing Disney songs again.

“Gavin.” Michael leans forward. Reaches out and puts a hand on his knee, then, when Gavin still doesn’t look him in the eye, reaches up and lifts his chin instead. “I was an ass before.”

“What?”

“Everything I was doing, I… I know it made you feel like a freak.” The word is bitter-ugly on his tongue but he needs to say it, needs to get it out there because “I felt like one too, okay, every day for fifty years until I met you guys. Still do now sometimes and it… seeing you like this, it upset me because I know how hard it is. I was scared.”

Alarm flickers across Gavin’s face and Michael quickly adds, “Not of you! Not of you, of… of slipping back to how I was before. It just reminded me of it all. But I… I know you feel like crap right now but Ray and I, we’ve been through it and finding this place, here with you and Ryan and the others… it helped. So let us help you now.”

Ray comes up by Michael, nodding earnestly, and something like a smile ghosts over Gavin’s face.

“Sitting in that room by myself did bugger all to help me sort out what I was feeling,” he admits, and Michael nods.

“Been there, done that, buddy. Fifty years of loner-ing my way across the States and all I got for it were some serious blisters.”

“I’m not like you though, Michael,” Gavin says then, eyes dropping again. “You’re… you’re halfway normal at least; my body is _literally_ dead and this,” he waves the hand that isn’t his, “This is some other guy’s and I’m all, I’m all gross and-”

“You think _you’re_ gross,” Ray cuts in, “Dude have you _seen_ me transform? Oh man it’s horrific.”

“It really is,” Michael adds with a laugh. “There’s all these, like, crunching noises.”

“Also my dick totally transforms as well,” Ray adds, “Because a human dick on a wolf body would just be weird, am I right. Now imagine that, imagine a human dick morphing into a wolf dick. God.”

Gavin’s laughing a bit now, a shy sort of laugh like he’s not sure, but it grows more genuine as they continue.

“You think your eyes are weird, they’re actually sort of cool,” Michael says. “Unlike mine; they’re all fucked up.”

“No, they’re not, Michael,” Gavin says, but Michael shrugs.

“They totally are though. We can be weird-eye buddies together now.”

Gavin’s smiling and Michael reaches out and cups his cheek. It’s a weirdly intimate gesture but it feels right, in that moment.

“So,” he says quietly, “You see, we can get used to this. _You’ll_ get used to this. And we’ve pulled our heads out of our asses now, we’re not fighting anymore. So it’ll all be fine. It’ll all be _fine._ Okay?”

“Okay,” Gavin replies, and even if he’s just agreeing for the sake of it, it’s a start. It’s a _start_ and that’s as good as anything else.

—

Gavin’s still shy around the others, the gents when they come back with food, but none of them let him go back up to his room, afraid if he does he won’t come out again. They give him his space, spreading out throughout the kitchen, the lab, the living room to eat and letting Gavin pick where he wants to go. He comes and sits next to Michael at the table, which he is oddly flattered by, and he catches Gavin up on some of the shows they’ve been watching without him. There’s a strange normalcy to it.

Life goes on. There are good days and there are bad days. For a long time Gavin is different, quieter, more reflective. He spends a lot of time watching back his old footage; after a time he starts to move back towards his usual self. He stops flinching when they look at him.

Michael talks to Gavin more, opens up about his own experiences. Helps him through it. It’s hard a lot of the time. He has bad days too. Jack is a blessing; he always seems to know when it’s getting to be too much for one or the other of them. Takes them out for walks on the moor where they can just be free of the house for a while, free of the others. In the biting open cold it’s easy to let everything fall away, to just forget it for a while.

Gavin’s still acting a little weird around Ryan. It makes Michael feel terrible to watch it because he can’t imagine how hard this must be for the two of them, seeing as they seemed on the verge of, well, getting together before all this happened, and he knows the night Gavin went out, the night he died, something had just happened between them.

He goes to Gavin about it one day, taking Ray along with him. They find the other man sitting in his bedroom staring out the window. He still does this sometimes, sits alone in silence, and Michael doesn’t know what’s on his mind.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he asks, rapping on the doorframe, and Gavin turns to look at them.

To Michael’s surprise he spills immediately. “I’m trying to remember.”

“Remember what?” Michael comes in, sits on the bed, Ray beside him. Gavin traces a finger through the frost on the window before turning to them fully, a frown on his face.

“I feel a lot better now,” he admits, and Ray lets out a whoop and a fist pump.

Michael grins and says, “So have you munked off with the hand that isn’t yours yet?”

“ _No_ , Michael, dear bloody God no,” Gavin replies. He sounds horrified but Michael grins, knowing the more they joke about it the easier it is to deal with. “ _Anyway_ , I feel a lot better but there’s… there’s still something, I don’t… it’s not complete. Something happened, with Ryan I think, and I can’t remember and it’s really bugging the hell out of me.”

“What exactly do you not remember?” Michael asks. “Like what time frame?”

“The whole week before I died is a blur.” It comes out more easily now, _I died_ , like he’s getting used to it. “But I think this happened like, the day immediately before.”

“Right. Well, I can fill you in a bit,” Michael says. “It snowed.”

“Yeah,” Ray adds, “We had a snowball fight. Geoff won.”

“Ryan already told me that,” Gavin says, frustrated, “But I can’t _remember_.”

There’s a moment of silence. Michael looks around the room and his gaze falls on the cameras in the corner, the laptop on the desk.

“Maybe you filmed it,” he says, abruptly.

Gavin blinks. “That would be awfully convenient?”

“No, dude, you film _everything_ , you must have caught _something_ ,” Michael says. “I’m positive you were filming on that day because it doesn’t snow here much. You definitely had your camera out. Even if you didn’t catch exactly what it is you’ve forgotten, it might jog your memory.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Ray says, and Gavin nods.

They end up sitting around the laptop watching video after video as they try to narrow in on the day. Michael can’t help but give a fond smile at the footage. His own wide beaming face as they stand out in the snow fall, Ray grinning beside him. Cheeks red from the cold. Gavin’s excited voice behind the camera. Maybe it would have made him feel sad a few weeks ago but not now, not now because now it seems like they can have this again. Like they’re inching back towards this comfortable normalcy.

“ _Ryan, what do you think of the snow, Ryan_?” Gavin behind the camera asks. The view swivels to Ryan standing just in the doorway of the house, pulling a scarf on.

“ _I think it’s damn cold_ ,” Ryan replies, but he’s grinning and Gavin gives a squeaky laugh before running off to join the others.

It’s weird watching themselves, seeing just how _happy_ they all are - and here and now Michael remembers it again, the fortune teller’s words. It hits him then   that Gavin is _back_ and that is a hope again, a possibility again.

He finds himself watching Gavin and Ray instead of the screen after that, the intent concentration on their faces. The little smile on Ray’s lips as he watches them laugh and fool about onscreen.

They go through clip after clip of snowball fighting but there’s nothing, and they’re on the verge of giving up when Gavin opens a new media file.

“ _Here’s Ryan_ ,” Gavin breathes behind the camera. He’s hiding behind some bushes and through the sticks Ryan can be seen, wandering alone. The camera tracks Gavin’s hand as he scoops up a snowball and lobs it, managing to get Ryan right in the head.

“ _I know you’re out there, Gavin!”_

“ _No you don’t!”_

Ray laughs as they watch Gavin take down Ryan with a surprisingly sneaky strategy. When he runs over to help him up the camera stops being in frame at all, just flails wildly in Gavin’s hand, and it gets even worse when somehow Gavin ends up on the floor moments later. There are just vague flashes of the two of them tussling and Gavin flailing around, squeaking as, it seems, Ryan stuffs snow down his shirt.

There’s an odd pause after that, a quietness. The camera is held weirdly and they can mostly see the sky and a bit of Ryan’s head.

“ _Shit, are you cold?”_

“ _Only because you shoved a bloody lot of ice down my back, you pillock.”_

“ _Sorry.”_

Ryan leans forward and they see him unwrap his scarf before moving forward out of frame, but it’s obvious that he’s putting it around Gavin’s neck. Michael glances over at him; Gavin might be dead but his cheeks have gone a little bit redder, a slight flush on the usually pallid corpse skin, his eyes fixed on the screen.

“ _Thanks, lovely Ryan.”_

The camera falls back then, like Gavin dropped it, trained up at nothing but the sky, but the last thing they see before the motion is Gavin leaning in towards Ryan. There’s no mistaking the sound that comes afterward, and Gavin hits pause and closes the video, reaching up to cover his face with his hands.

“Dude.” Ray sounds fucking delighted. “You totally put the moves on Ryan!”

“Oh, God,” Gavin groans.

“Do you remember it now?” Michael asks, and Gavin shakes his head.

“No, but now I know what happened. Oh God, this is… this is bloody terrible.”

“Why’s it terrible?” Ray demands. “You know what happened. You can go talk it out with him and things will be fine.”

“Things won’t be fine, Ray,” Gavin says, something biting in it. “Even if… even if he wanted me before, and he probably didn’t, look at me _now_. Fuck. Fuck. _Fuuuck_.”

There’s something self-deprecating in it and Michael frowns. He doesn’t know what to do; normally he’d give Gavin a swift kick in the ass about his self-worth issues but here, now, Michael can see exactly what his concerns are.

“Ryan is Science McNerd Extraordinaire,” he says instead. “I’m pretty sure he gets boners over chemical reactions and you’re, like, his biggest most successful experiment. He fucking brought you back from the dead. I bet he faps over it every night.”

“You are a disgusting individual,” Ray says, looking a bit concerned. Gavin just covers his face again and Michael shrugs.

“I mean it, though. He’s the last person to give a toss about whether someone is alive or not. Okay, that came out sounding very weird and a bit disturbing but you know what I mean. I really don’t think he cares.”

“How can anyone _not_ care,” Gavin says, and Michael rolls his eyes and slips off the bed. Lets Ray move in to comfort him, since he’ll probably distract Gavin with games in a minute anyway, and steps out of the room. He has someone else to see.

—

“Ryan,” Michael says.

Ryan still spends ages down in his lab. He hasn’t moved to approach Gavin, not properly since he came back. Michael supposes he knows why now.

Things are better between the two of them, at least. With Gavin out of his room and everyone coming to terms with things, relations in the whole house have improved and Michael couldn’t be more relieved.

“Hey,” Ryan says. He rubs his eyes tiredly. “Everything okay?”

“So Gavin just found camera footage of him laying one on you.”

The look on Ryan’s face is priceless; if Michael was not so concerned he might have found it amusing.

“I’m guessing this is why things are so weird between you guys now,” Michael says, and Ryan runs his hands over his face.

“It’s complicated,” he says. Michael rolls his eyes.

“I don’t care if you guys fuck now or later,” he says, “But right now Gavin thinks you’re disgusted by him and will never love him now that he’s gone all partially-deceased on us, so. You should probably fix that up.”

“That’s not how it is,” Ryan says, looking stricken. “That’s not… any hesitation on my part does not come from the fact that Gavin’s changed now.”

“I know that and you know that but Gavin fucking doesn’t, so please tell him,” Michael says, and Ryan nods.

Duty done, Michael expects them to deal with it privately, expects to see the end result, but somehow he ends up being there for part of the resolution; he’s in the kitchen getting a glass of water. It’s late at night and he hears Gavin start to come down the stairs at the same time Ryan’s coming up from the lab and they quite literally bump into one another.

“Oh!” Ryan says, sounding very startled.

“Sorry,” Gavin replies then, “I was just, uh.” He gestures towards the kitchen and Michael sees Ryan frown.

“Did you eat yet today?”

“Tried. Made me sick.”

“I’m working on that,” Ryan says. “I think I might have something to fix it.”

“That would be top, because I miss pizza and spaghetti and bacon and-” he rattles on until Ryan’s laughing and when it fades they’re standing there looking at each other with something like a smile.

Except then Ryan says, “We need to talk,” and Gavin looks down, and Michael realises they’re gonna have this discussion right there in the hallway. By God he doesn’t want to intrude, to overhear, but he also doesn’t want to interrupt and going out right now would break the mood that’s settled between them, might make them put it off until later. He doesn't want that either. He ducks back behind the fridge and hears Ryan say, “I know what you found out about what happened before you died.”

“Oh,” is all Gavin says. “Yeah, I, um. Sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Ryan says. “And I know - I know now’s not the time for anything of that sort, because you’re not ready yet and maybe I’m not too, but it’s not… it’s not because of what you are now. That doesn’t matter to me.”

“How can it not matter?” Gavin insists. “I’m _dead_ and you’re alive, that’s a pretty big barrier.”

“You’re not dead. I brought you back.”

“I _am_ dead, Ryan, I… look at me!” He flings his arms out. “You could stab me in the stomach right now and it would do fuck all because the only thing keeping me alive is this enchanted heart. I’m not… I’m _dead_ -”

“Everything you are,” Ryan cuts in, voice low, “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, are no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”

There is a heavy silence between them. Michael doesn’t know what the _fuck_ that all meant but it seems to mean something to Gavin, because he stills, his breath shallowing a moment.

Ryan reaches out and puts a hand on Gavin’s chest, over his heart.

“Your heart is beating,” he says, very seriously, “Your brain is working, all those connections are firing. As far as I’m concerned you’re alive, you’re _you_. So that hand isn’t yours, that leg, who gives a fuck. People have transplants all the time. You’re still Gavin.” A pause. A small, hesitant smile. “My Gavin.”

Gavin looks down; he’s breathing shakily now but he leans into Ryan’s touch and they’re both distracted enough that Michael takes the chance to slip out of the kitchen without them noticing, through into the living room and back upstairs to his room. He can’t quite stop smiling after that and doesn’t know why.

—

Life goes on. Things get better, shift back towards normal. Whatever else happened between them that night, Gavin and Ryan seem more comfortable around each other now, inching back towards how they were before.

Michael is out on one of his early morning walks one day when he sees two figures making their way down the trail towards him. Recognises Geoff and Jack and frowns, curious, but jogs to meet them.

“Hey,” he says, “What are you doing out here so early?”

“Looking for you, actually,” Jack replies.

Michael blinks at them. “Okay…”

“Just wanted to see if you’re holding up okay,” Geoff says. It’s conversational but Michael looks at him and meets his eyes and bites his lip, heart sinking a little as he remembers his break down, how thoroughly he was not coping when Gavin was dead. The memory makes him shiver and the next thing he knows Jack’s hand is on his shoulder, squeezing soothingly.

“I’m good,” he says, “Things are good.”

“They are,” Geoff muses, “Aren’t they?”

“Maybe we were wrong,” Michael says, looking over at him. Geoff looks back at him and there’s something in his eyes there; Michael has seen him move back towards his usual dynamic with Gavin, teasing and kidding around with him, wrestling as usual. He looks now like he knows things are okay, maybe not exactly the same as they were before, but different doesn’t necessarily mean worse.

Jack lets out a low hum and Michael looks over at him and feels a sudden surge of affection. It’s easy to forget Jack because he doesn’t draw attention to himself, not really, and there’s something admirable about that. About the way he’s just always _there_ for then, behind the scenes, the way in the end he always seems to turn out right.

He was kind to Gavin from the start - to all of them - and Michael loves him for that, suddenly. Loves Geoff for all the times he was there for him too.

“Come on,” Geoff says then, bumping at Michael’s shoulder. “Let’s go back home.”

—

He tells Ray about the fortune teller’s prophecy that day. They’re sitting up on the roof. It’s been three weeks since Ray had an uncontrolled turn. He’s getting the hang of it.

Michael tells him, warily at first, but the rest all slips out. He laughs a lot, nervously, says “I don’t know,” and “I don’t think I even fucking believe it, really,” but Ray looks very thoughtful.

“I don’t know, Michael,” he says eventually. “That shit works out sometimes. We all believe in magic, after all.”

“Yeah, but…” Michael trails off. Everything he can think to say feels like an excuse. “What, you think? All six of us?”

“Weirder things have happened,” Ray says, and laughs. “Like people coming back from the dead.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He feels almost embarrassed, now, looking down at his shoelaces. “Anyway, it’s… Gavin and Ryan still aren't together.”

“They’re pretty fucking close, though,” Ray points out. “And have you seen Geoff and Jack lately? They’re always fucking going around together. There’s something there, I’ll bet my ass on it.”

“What about you, then?” Michael asks, before he can quite stop himself. “How do you feel about them?”

Ray is quiet a moment. Michael can’t look at him, but after a moment he feels a hand slip into his, Ray’s fingers lacing between his own. Tugging until Michael turns to look at him.

“I think,” Ray says, “That what happens will happen. Right now we just have a for-now and I’m fine with that. I love you all but who my dick ends up in, only the future will tell.”

“We’re talking about your human dick, right?” Michael says, just to be vulgar, because he’s feeling even more embarrassed now, and Ray hoots with laughter and nearly falls off the roof.

“You’re depraved,” he says, “You’re fucking depraved, Michael Jones.”

“It was a valid question,” Michael replies, but grins, relieved, because Ray is right, and suddenly they have a future, they have one now together and he’s looking forward to it.

—

—

“It’s springtime!” 

Gavin is dancing, quite terribly, but he stops when he seems to realise the movements are doing no favours to the footage that’ll arise from the camera in his hand. Michael sees him calm down a little but he’s still grinning, still bouncing, still excited as he goes over and zooms in dramatically close on Ryan’s face.

“ _Fairies_ , Ryan. The fairies will be back.”

“Yes, Gavin.” There’s excitement in Ryan’s voice too, an enthusiasm that Michael’s missed over the winter.

“There might even be little baby fairies. That’d be top.” The camera swivels to Michael next. “And we can start going for swimmies again!”

“You’re God damn right, boi.” Michael reaches out and Gavin flinches back, seeming to think he’s about to get his nose flicked, but Michael just takes the camera from him.

“What are you doing, Michael?” Gavin asks.

Michael trains the camera on his face. Zooms out a bit to frame it better.

“I’m making sure you’re in a few of these clips, doofus,” he says. “You’re always behind the camera.”

“Yeah, ya dope, that’s why I’m called the _cameraman_ ,” Gavin says, but smiles a bit shyly, looking away. He’s getting better about mirrors but Michael knows that it takes a while, getting used to the drastic physical changes.

Geoff swoops in then, though, grabbing Gavin around the waist and spinning him around. Gavin squawks, flapping at him, and stumbles dizzily when he’s put down.

“Come on, let’s go, are we expeditioning or what?” Geoff demands. They don’t do this often, go out all six of them - the sheer noise level tends to scare off anything that might be out there - but it’s such a lovely day and they’ve been cooped up all winter and Michael’s enjoying being out with them all, _loving it._

“Gav, come help me carry this stuff,” Ryan calls. They grab their gear and start setting off. Michael’s still filming; he trains the camera on Jack - who smiles and waves before falling back beside Geoff. Michael heads out the door but pans back towards them and does a double take when he notices how Geoff’s hand is laced together with Jack’s. Films it for a few minutes before jerking the camera away towards Ryan and Gavin, skipping away up head, talking excitedly about everything they want to do this season.

He can’t help but smile to look at them. Even if they haven’t moved forward with anything yet he knows it’s only a matter of time - and time is something they have in abundance now. They’ll get there.

“Hey.” Ray comes up next to him and sticks his tongue out when Michael swings the camera towards him.

“Hey,” he replies, and Ray smiles but grabs his wrist and lowers the camera.

“Film later,” he says. “Enjoy the moment for now. What’s that phrase, that one about, like, enjoying shit while it happens?”

“Carpe diem?”

“No, no…” He pauses for a moment then grins, clicking his tongue. “YOLO! That’s right.”

“Don’t start the YOLO shit again,” Michael groans, “I don’t think that’s what it even means.”

“I guess it’s not really applicable in your case,” Ray muses. “You’ll live a hundred fucking times, after all.”

“I guess,” Michael replies, but looks around at all the others and gets the incredibly sappy thought _but this time is the best_.

All his wandering has come to a head, it seems. And maybe he never imagined he’d end up here, in this house on top of the hill with a little bunch of six assorted freaks and geeks. But he has, and he fucking _loves it_ , and this is where he’s properly _living_. Here, with them, and he turns the camera off and grabs Ray’s hand and jogs to catch up with the others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for this prompt, I had a great time writing in this verse! Hope you enjoyed it <3


End file.
